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GEORGE  ELIOT 

AND 

THOMAS  HARDY 

A  CONTRAST 

BY 

LINA  WRIGHT  BERLE 


a^^^^ 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 

islCMXVII 


COPYRIGHT    I917    BY 
MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 


PRINTED  IN  AMERICA 


MAIM 


To  My  Pabents 
The  First  Fbuits  op  Their  Love  and  Toil 


377541 


CONTENTS 

ChAPTEB  I  VAOB 

Rational  Idealism  1 

Chapter  II 
Habdt  and  the  Scientific  Spibit  23 

Chapteb  III 
Weak  Sisters  45 

Chapter  IV 
"Her  Inpinitb  Variety"  66 

Chapter  V 
Men  op  Straw  91 

Chapter  VI 
"The  Silver  Iterance"  111 

Chapter  VII 
The  Increment  op  Years  131 

Chapter  VIII 
Radical  and  Reactionary  153 


Attractive  editions  of  the  principal  works  of  George  Eliot  are 
published  in  Everyman's  Library  by  E.  P.  Button  &,  Company f 
and  in  The  World's  Classics  by  The  Oxford  University  Press, 
New  York, 


GEORGE  ELIOT  AN 
THOMAS  HARBY 


RATIONAL  IDEALISM 

ARDENT  souls,  ready  to  constinict 
their  coming  lives,  are  apt  to  commit 
themselves  to  the  fulfilment  of  their  own  vi;^ 
sions,"  wrote  George  Eliot  in  Bliddlemarch, 
This  anxiety  to  realize  ^-^  itWai  's  Oiie  6f  the 
greatest  motive  tora^  in  ui^t  w:.iM;  wjseiy 
directed,  it  makes  possible  great  reforms  and 
lasting  achievements,  but  without  a  rational 
foundation  it  degenerates  into  an  aimJess  un- 
rest which  is  doomed  to  futility.  -Under  the 
formative  in:3utiiee  of  the  nineteenth  century 
this  idealism  has  abolished  slavery  and  re- 
formed prisons ;  it  has  developed  hospitals  and 
improved  sanitation;  it  has  fostered  the  social 


2  GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

sciences,  and  ministered  to  the  needs  of  its 
less  favored  contemporaries  on  a  scale  never 
before  possible  in  the  world's  history.  A  great 
humanitarian  impulse,  coincident  with  great 
material  development,  has  opened  the  way  for 
tremendous,  and  almost  un^believable,  ad- 
vances. 

But  with  these  unquestioned  improvements 
there  have  come  the  corresponding  drawbacks 
of  various  sorts.  Perhaps  the  plainest  evi- 
dent -  of  di^^c  lies  in  the  change  which  has  af- 
fected the  re^^lm  of  speculative  thought,  and 
literature  in  so  far  as  it  reflects  that  thought. 
Formerly  the  attention  of  the  people  was  fixed 
on  a  social  group  which  stood  above  them.  In 
the  days  when  learning  was  the  possession  of 
the  few,  the  learned  class  took  this  position  of 
preeminence.  In  one  wav  and  rj' other  the 
emphasis  has  shifted.  We  no  longer  look  at  a 
class  which  we  expect  to  contribute  to  our  de- 
velopment, but  at  a  group  to  whose  ascent  we 
hope  to  give  material  assistance.  Our  attitude 
is  none  the  less  aristocratic  for  all  this ;  we  can- 


RATIONAL  IDEALISM  3 

not  make  parade  of  our  increasing  democracy 
of  spirit ;  what  has  happened  is  merely  that  we 
beheve  ourselves  the  aristocrats,  instead  of 
looking  to  others  for  this  distinction.  In  our 
pride  of  emergence,  we  assume  a  tone  of  pa- 
tronage which  is  in  itself  a  sign  of  imperfect 
education. 

In  literature  the  development  is  peculiarly 
striking.  From  the  classical  insistence  upon 
themes  of  high  and  lofty  import,  we  have  gone 
to  the  opposite  extreme.  A  modern  poet,  John 
Masefield,  in  the  prelude  to  a  volume  of  Salt- 
Water  Ballads^  defines  the  province  in  which 
his  main  interest  lies  with  precision,  clearness, 
and  poetry  withal: 

Not  of  the  princes  and  prelates  with  peri- 
wigged charioteers, 

Riding  triumphantly  laurelled,  to  lap  the  fat 
of  the  years. 

Rather  the  scorned,  the  rejected,  the  men 
hemmed  in  by  the  spears.  .  .  . 

Of  the  maimed,  of  the  halt,  and  the  blind  in 
the  rain  and  the  cold. 

Of  these  shall  my  songs  be  fashioned,  my  tales 
be  told. 


4  GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

Masefield  is  not  alone  in  his  preference  for 
this  stratum  of  society.  In  the  mistaken  ef- 
fort to  democratize  literature  and  thought, 
we  have  fastened  our  attention  upon  our  so- 
cial and  intellectual  inferiors.  This  is  legiti- 
mate enough ;  but  before  embarking  upon  such 
a  course  the  danger  should  be  clearly  faced — 
that  of  assimilating  those  very  traits  which 
we  wish  to  eradicate.  This  is  the  more  dan- 
gerous in  those  whose  privilege  it  is  to  lead 
their  generation. 

A  disquieting  feature  of  the  new  humani- 
tarianism  is  the  tendency  to  devote  the  best  of 
its  artistic  effort  to  the  interpretation  of  the 
injurious  or  degenerating  elements  in  our  civil- 
ization. Oscar  Wilde,  with  The  Picture  of 
Dorian  Grey  and  The  Ballad  of  Reading 
Gaol,  occurs  at  once  as  a  pertinent  example 
of  a  few  years  ago;  Mr.  Percival  Pollard,  in 
his  Masks  and  Minstrels  of  New  Germany, 
gives  examples  and  criticism  of  another  phase 
of  the  same  outgrowth  of  our  civilization. 
These  interpretations  are  not  written  in  any 
corrective  or  satiric  spirit,  under  which  guise 


RATIONAL  IDEALISM  5 

the  dramatists  of  the  Restoration  used  to  jus- 
tify their  brutal  representations;  it  is  part  of 
what  purports  to  be  an  impartial  presentment 
of  life  as  it  actually  is.  With  such  an  im- 
partial picture  we  have  no  proper  quarrel ;  but 
it  is  seldom  that  this  can  be  conducted  in  a 
strictly  scientific  spirit.  It  is  argued  that  the 
portrait  must  be  sympathetic  to  be  accurate. 
From  sympathy  the  next  step  is  to  interpreta- 
tion of  hidden  motives,  and  finally  to  justifica- 
tion of  them.  In  literature  we  have  Tess  of  r\ 
the  D'Urhervilles:  A  Pure  Woman,  Faith- - 
fully  Presented.  In  criminology  it  takes  the 
form  of  the  view  of  the  offender  as  the  victim 
of  disease;  in  education  it  is  identified  with 
the  conception  of  the  child  as  the  product  of 
an  unalterable  heredity,  or  environment,  or 
both.  Whatever  the  field,  the  tendency  is  in- 
variably the  same.  We  must  place  the  re- 
sponsibility for  existing  facts  of  personality 
on  conditions  arising  from  this  disjointed 
frame  of  things,  not  by  any  conspiracy  upon 
the  human  creature  himself.  '•^ 

It  is  a  curious  paradox  that  this  negation  of 


6  GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

individual  dignity  should  run  parallel  with  a 
complete  practical  individualism.  Never  were 
men  less  bound  by  convention  than  now.  The 
reason  may  be  that  in  feeling  themselves  so 
thoroughly  fettered  by  laws  into  which  they 
have  only  a  partial  insight, — if,  indeed,  that 
is  permitted  them, — ^they  believe  themselves 
thereby  emancipated  from  all  share  in  either 
the  triumphs  or  the  failures  of  a  universe  run 
on  principles  of  scientific  management  by  an 
impersonal  Bureau  of  Vital  Statistics,  and  ac- 
cordingly obliged  to  consider  nothing  beyond 
their  own  desires. 

Of  this  form  of  exaggerated  humanitarian- 
ism  Thomas  Hardy  is  in  a  certain  sense  the 
typical  exponent.  He  preaches  at  once  an  in- 
dividualism unbounded  in  its  scope,  because 
unlimited  by  other  than  hedonistic  considera- 
tions, and  a  social  philosophy  whose  key-stone 
is  the  broadest  charity  for  even  the  most  loath- 
some excesses.  From  being  in  a  measure  n 
pioneer  in  this  field  of  literature,  for  his  work 
began  while  "Victorianism"  was  still  rampant, 
he  has  become  a  commonplace  among  modern 


RATIONAL  IDEALISM  7 

propagandists.  This  way  madness  lies.  We 
may  fairly  ask  with  Matthew  Arnold: 

Is  there  no  life  save  this  alone? 
Madman  or  slave,  must  man  be  one? 

The  direct  question  is  whether  it  is  possible 
to  look  at  those  things  which  lie  on  a  lower 
level  justly,  sympathetically,  and  frankly, 
without  being  tainted  by  them,  as  a  result 
of  our  over-zealous  humanitarianism. 

(Fortunately,  there  is  a  rational  idealism. 
There  have  dvvays  been  some  who  would  not 
bow  the  knee  to  Baal,  however  great  the  pro- 
vocation; who  refused  to  allow  euphemism  to 
obscure  actuality,  or  to  dignify  mediocrity  in 
the  name  of  democracy.  Perhaps  the  sanest 
representative  of  this  tradition  in  literature  is 
George  Eliot,  herself  a  humanitarian  of  the  hu- 
manitarians, a  woman  who  was  willing  to  take 
the  radical  position  in  a  crisis  rather  than  aban- 
don a  principle  to  convention. 

Humanitarian  zeal  in  George  Eliot  is  quali- 
fied by  a  strong  recognition  of  the  need  for 
standards  and  criteria  whereby  to  make  ef* 


8  GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

fective  the  attempted  reforms.  As  a  result, 
though  her  sympathies  are  catholic,  she  never 
allows  them  to  blunt  her  perception  of  the 
wider  values  involved.  jThere  is  no  question 
of  obscuring  sin  under  the  name  of  misfor- 
tune, or  of  disguising  wrongdoing  under  the 
sanction  of  necessity  or  expediency.  This 
makes  for  the  delineation  of  a  society  far  more 
easy  to  live  in  than  that  in  which  each  infringe- 
ment of  the  moral  law  or  social  convention 
must  instantly  bear  its  burden  of  explanation, 
interpretation,  and  justification.  The  reader 
is  relieved  from  the  horrible  fear  that  his  nat- 
ural disapprobations  may  have  led  him  into  the 
unpardonable  sin  of  purely  conventional  cen- 
sure. 

In  addition,  there  is  this  to  be  remembered 
in  contrasting  the  humanitarianism  of  George 
Eliot  with  that  of  later  writers.  Her  point  of 
view  is  one  which  never  loses  sight  of  the  fact 
that  humanity,  liable  to  err  as  it  is,  will  be  di- 
vided in  its  error  onlj^-  by  the  nature  of  its  op- 
portunity. Given  equal  means,  its  sins  and  re- 
sistances will  be  much  the  same.    Clear  as  she 


RATIONAL  IDEALISM  9 

IS  in  her  perception  of  the  degrees  of  moral 
stature,  she  is  never  so  bigoted  as  to  intimate 
a  superiority  impossible  to  the  people  of  whom 
she  writes,  as  the  moderns  not  infrequently  do. 
Her  pictures  of  degeneration,  of  weakness  and 
wrong,  of  moral  obliquity,  are  all  so  delicately 
tuned  to  the  actual  conditions  of  life  that  we,  in 
contemplating  them,  are  forced  to  admit,  in 
whatever  phraseology  best  suits  ourselves, 
"There,  but  for  the  grace  of  God,  goes  John" 
Bunyan."/ 

On  the  whole,  such  a  position  as  this  is  an 
excellent  one  for  us  to  find  ourselves  in.  It 
is  altogether  too  easy  for  us  to  fall  into  the 
position  which  Charles  Lamb  voluntarily  pre- 
ferred in  the  drama,  and  to  say  of  the  literature 
of  our  day,  and  its  moral  or  non-moral  values : 

I  confess  for  myself  that  (with  no  great  de- 
linquencies to  answer  for)  I  am  glad  for  a 
season  to  take  an  airing  beyond  the  diocese  of 
strict  conscience,  not  to  live  always  within  the 
precincts  of  the  law-courts, — but  now  and  then, 
for  a  dream-while  or  so,  to  imagine  a  world 
with  no  meddling  restrictions — to  get  into  re- 


10        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

cesses  whither  the  hunter  cannot  follow  me 
...  I  come  back  to  my  cage  and  my  restraint 
the  fresher  and  more  healthy  for  it. 

The  slight  difference  between  our  point  of 
view  and  this  is  that  whereas  Lamb  loves  to  es- 
cape from  the  cage  of  actuality,  we  take  pleas- 
ure in  the  plunge  into  what  seems  to  us  the 
prison  of  life  as  it  really  is.  Whereas  Lamb 
loved  to  create  for  himself  an  illusory  world 
in  which  moral  judgments  were  unnecessary, 
we  love  to  lower  ourselves  into  a  world  where 
also  moral  judgments  are,  for  one  reason  or 
another,  superfluous, — in  which  we  revel  in 
the  degradation  of  our  lives. 

This  we  do  in  the  name  of  reality.  We  have 
waked  to  the  consciousness  that  the  old  world 
of  romance  and  chivalry,  of  Arden  and  Illyria 
and  Verona,  of  Robin  Hood  and  Henry  of 
Navarre,  Joan  of  Arc  and  Beatrice  Cenci,  was 
only  a  child's  world,  *'such  stuff  as  dreams  are 
made  of."  What  we  have  achieved  in  its  place 
is  not  realism,  but  a  bitter  travesty  of  it,  a 
grotesque  and  absurd  fidelity  to  the  mechani- 


RATIONAL   IDEALISM  11 

cal  facts  of  life,  without  the  corresponding 
recognition  of  the  spiritual  values  which  are 
equally  a  part  of  it.  There  are  still  those  who 
perceive  that  life  is  not  the  sordid  thing  which 
passes  as  such  in  these  studies.  To  readers  _ 
fully  conscious  of  this,  George  Eliot  appears 
as  at  once  realist  and  artist, — one  who  pre- 
sents not  only  the  truth,  but  the  illusion  of 
truth  as  well.  There  is  a  sober  satisfaction  in 
her  novels  such  as  the  modernists  rarely  give, 
unless  as  a  conscious  reversion  to  an  older  type. 
For  the  older  novelist  was  not  hampered  by  a 
public  which  demanded  journalistic  terseness 
of  him;  if  he  wished  to  introduce  an  incident 
of  pure  characterization,  he  felt  free  to  do  so, 
without  the  fear  that  by  so  doing  he  would  in- 
terrupt the  closeness  of  contact  between  author 
and  reader.  His  selection  of  material  followed 
artistic  lines,  rather  than  the  arbitrary  regula- 
tions of  space  and  copy. 

Even  on  his  own  ground,  that  of  presenting 
the  much  sought-after  "cross-section  of  life,'1 
the  modern  critic  must  admit  that  George  El-\ 
iot  has  fairly  met  him.     Indeed,  the  accuracy  | 


12         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

and  minuteness  of  her  achievements  are  sur- 
prising.fjSometimes,  it  must  be  admitted,  this 
haDperis  to  the  detriment  of  the  artistic  effect. 
Such  a  novel  as  Middlemarch,  for  example, 
owes  its  chief  value  to  this.  A  small  provincial 
town,  wherein  dwell  representatives  of  all 
classes,  independently  existing,  and  brought 
into  contact  with  each  other  only  by  the  merest 
accident  of  daily  life,  offers  scope  for  a  social 
study  such  as  we  are  fond  of  contemplatingJA 
present-day  novelist  would  doubtless  limit  his 
field  still  more  decisively,  as  indeed  has  been 
done  by  a  German  of  the  new  school,  to  the 
small  group  living  in  a  single  tenement. 

The  society  which  George  Eliot  depicts  is 
wide  enough  in  its  range  to  include  representa- 
tives of  nearly  all  classes,  particularly  those 
habitually  included  in  the  so-called  reading 
public.  The  majority  of  her  readers  belong 
largely  to  the  class  which  she  best  understands, 
— educated,  intelligent,  and  safely  removed 
from  any  extreme.  In  her  characterization 
she  has  the  further  advantage  of  the  setting  in 
which  her  action  normally  lies.1  If  we  except 


BATIONAL   IDEALISM  13 

Romola,  in  which  she  attempts  to  reproduce 
a  past  civilization,  there  is  no  novel  which  does 
not  take  place  under  the  most  usual  conditions 
of  English  life. 

On  such  a  basis  we  may  develop  a  rational 
**-— idealism, — one  which,  while  acknowledging 
^acts,  recognizes  also  the  relation  of  the  spirit- 
ual elements  in  life  to  the  grosser  material 
forces.  Of  course  we  must  remember  the  point 
whidr^merson  drove  home  with  such  direct- 
ness: "I  can  reason  down  or  deny  everything 
except  this  perpetual  Belly ;  feed  he  must  and 
will,  and  I  cannot  make  him  respectable."!  In 
all  idealistic  theory  and  practice  we  must  take 
into  account  this  fundamental  physical  ne- 
cessity. Yet  there  is  something  beyond,  which 
produces  as  valuable  factors  in  any  civilization 
as  the  material  onesJ  "There  are  so  many 
tender  and  holy  ernotions  flying  about  in  our 
inward  world,"  wrote  Jean  Paul,  * 'which,  like 
angels,  can  never  assume  the  body  of  an  out- 
ward act;  so  many  rich  and  lovely  flowers 
spring  up  which  bear  no  seed,  that  it  is  a  hap- 
piness poetry  was  invented,  which  receives  into 


14        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

its  limbus  all  these  incorporeal  spirits,  and  the 
perfume  of  all  these  flowers."  To  conserve 
these  elements,  there  is  necessary  something 
more  far-reaching  in  our  civilization  and  its 
literature  than  the  understanding  of  common- 
places and  brutalities. 

For  it  remains  true  that  literature  is  the 
most  powerful  instrument  for  preserving  these 
flowers  of  the  spirit.  Philosophy  is  too  re- 
mote from  the  bulk  of  our  life  to  have  the  in- 
fluence of  which  it  is  capable.  Music  has  not 
the  definiteness  which  is  needful  to  the  fullest 
expression.  The  written  word,  for  all  its  in- 
adequacy, is  still  the  best  medium  through 
which  to  communicate  both  the  sense  and  the 
sentiment  of  our  ideals. 

•"  ^^ Ardent  souls,  ready  to  construct  their  com- 
ing lives,  are  apt  to  commit  themselves  to  the 
fulfilment  of  their  own  visions/'  And  there- 
fore it  is  essential  that  their  visions  should  be 
perpetuated  and  strengthened  by  a  literature 
in  which  a  sane  realism  neither  ignores  nor  mag- 
nifies the  sordid  elements  in  even  the  most  per- 
fectly regulated  civilization.     It  is  a  curious 


RATIONAL  IDEALISM  15 

fact  that  there  are  always  the  two  strands  in 
literature, — always  distinct,  frequently  inter- 
woven and  overlapping,  yet  constantly  recog- 
nizable,— the  one  concerned  with  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  higher,  the  other  with  the 
lower  phases  of  life!/  In  the  drama  the  separa- 
tion has  been  peculiarly  marked,  until  the  mod- 
ern introduction  of  the  play  which  cannot  be 
classified  either  as  comedy  or  tragedy,  or  un- 
der any  one  of  the  subdivisions  by  which  we 
attempt  the  task  of  defining  the  various  aspects 
of  human  history.  The  drama  of  the  Restora- 
tion, for  example,  with  its  strained  and  impos- 
sibly idealistic  tragedy  closely  paralleled  by 
its  witty  and  grossly  sensual  realistic  comedy, 
is  a  fair  illustration  of  the  combination  of  the 
two  threads  at  a  given  time.  In  the  same  way 
the  two  tendencies  are  shown  in  the  novels  of  a 
slightly  later  period.  The  mawkish  sentiment 
of  Richardson  is  accompanied  by  the  full- 
blooded,  unreflecting  realism  of  Fielding.  In 
the  nineteenth  century  the  romantic  sympathy 
and  revolutionary  enthusiasm  of  Shelley  and 
Wordsworth  degenerate  into  a  discontented 


16        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

protest  against  life  as  it  is,  or  a  passive  acqui- 
escence in  its  imperfections.  Matthew  Arnold, 
with  all  his  excellences,  is,  so  far  as  his  poetry 
is  concerned,  an  example  of  the  former,  and 
Oscar  Wilde  the  ppotheosis  of  the  latter  atti- 
tude. 

With  the  actual  fulfilment  of  these  visions 
literature  can  have  but  little  to  do.  Sometimes, 
of  course,  a  book  deals  with  a  particular  sub- 
ject at  a  time  of  such  widely  diffused  feeling 
regarding  it,  that  it  brings  about  the  imme- 
diate completion  of  an  impending  reform,  and 
is  therefore  credited  with  being  the  immediate 
cause  of  the  advance.  This  was  true  of  Un- 
cle Tom's  Cabin,  of  Bleak  House,  and  of 
Oliver  Twist.  Special  circumstances  in  re- 
gard to  the  time  which  produced  them  have 
often  given  to  books  a  reputation  for  humani- 
tarian achievement  to  which  no  intrinsic  merit 
entitles  them.  As  a  rule  the  most  that  litera- 
ture can  do  is  to  stimulate  effort  along  spe- 
cial lines  of  its  own  choosing. 
"*  (George  Eliot  stands  in  a  central  position  be- 
tween the  two  streams.     Not  only  is  she  in 


RATIONAL  IDEALISM  17 

sympathy  with  those  who  are  anxious  to  see 
all  and  judge  leniently  yet  justly,  but  also  she 
recognizes  the  fallacy  of  allowing  the  critical 
faculties  to  lapse  in  the  interest  of  interpreta- 
tion. She  shows,  as  do  few  of  the  modems, 
a  careful  sense  of  the  due  proportions  to  be  ob- 
served in  all  social  philosophy.  How  this  is 
accomplished  will  be  shown  in  succeeding  chap- 
ters. For  the  present  the  important  thing  for 
us  to  note  is  the  achievement. 

The  question  may  fairly  be  raised:  What 
has  the  generation  which  has  succeeded  George 
Eliot's  done  to  carry  on  the  ideal?  The  an- 
swer is  not  easy.  We  stand  in  the  middle  of 
a  confused  tangle  of  contradictory  develop- 
ments. Our  cosmopolitan  and  international 
ideals  have  of  late  suffered  a  rude  shock,  which 
must  inevitably  change  their  course  and  modify 
their  accents.  Our  social  philosophy  has  also 
undergone  change.  A  little  of  this  is  the  nec- 
essary reaction  which  always  follows  the  par- 
tial achievement  of  an  aim,  or  the  half -com- 
pletion of  a  definitely  expressed  purpose.  Al- 
ways "a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp," 


18        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

and  it  is  inevitable  that  ideals  should  expand 
with  the  increase  in  accomplishment,  supersed- 
ing those  which  went  before  in  some  measure. 
We  can  point  to  some  successes,  and  many  fail- 
ures; to  ideals  which  proved  impossible  of  im- 
mediate fulfilment,  and  to  visions  which  lacked 
the  essentials  for  perpetuity.  What  we  can 
say  with  definiteness  is  that,  to  the  extent  in 
which  she  expressed  the  idealism  of  her  time, 
George  Eliot  did  so  in  the  direction  which  the 
subsequent  generation  has  found  most  sound. 
The  vision  of  a  world  set  free  can  only  be 
realized  by  the  intelligent  co-operation  and 
mental  rapprochement  of  thousands  of  individ- 
uals, each  working  in  a  limited  area,  and  neces- 
sarily with  limited  opportunities.  To  helj^ 
them  understand  the  problems  of  their  lives 
in  their  larger  relations  is  more  iniportant  than 
that  they  should  have  a  clear  knowledge  of  ab- 
normal psychology.  The  simple,  straightfor- 
ward interpretation  of  their  own  lives  holds  far 
wider  promise  than  the  analysis  of  degeneracy 
and  disease.  Of  the  latter  our  law-courts  and 
hospitals  give  an  all  too  convincing  picture. 


RATIONAL   IDEALISM  19 

The  generation  which  is  ready  to  construct 
its  coming  life  is  not  that  to  which  George 
EHot  spoke.  Instead,  it  is  a  generation  which 
has  included  her  in  its  list  of  discarded  think- 
ers. Its  mind  is  fed  with  violences,  both  of  act- 
ual fact  and  of  imaginative  conception.  J  The 
naturalists  of  the  extreme  Russian  and  French 
schools,  to  which  Hardy's  work  has  affiliations, 
could  conceive  no  more  overwhelming  world- 
catastrophe  than  that  which  has  made  itself 
the  commonplace  of  our  times.  The  lawless- 
ness of  the  world  of  fact  has  out-run  the  law- 
lessness of  the  world  of  fiction.  It  is  therefore 
small  matter  for  wonder  that  such  an  orderly 
and  essentially  sane  view  of  life  as  George 
Eliot's  should  have  been  superseded  in  popular 
favor.  Not  that  it  has  been  in  any  sense  out- 
grown. Her  appeal  to  tradition,  her  appreci- 
ation of  the  value  of  the  conventional  standards 
of  marriage,  let  us  say,  is  no  less  pertinent  to- 
day than  it  was  in  18T0.  In  his  book,  Proh- 
lems  of  Conducts  Dr.  Durant  Drake  cites 
Adam  Bede  as  a  book  which  every  adoles- 
cent boy  or  girl  should  be  required  to  read,  for 


20        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

the  soundness  of  its  point  of  view.  Twentieth 
century  eugenic  education  can  go  no  further 
than  this. 

It  may  be  that  this  newer  generation  is  not 
so  far  removed  from  the  old  except  in  its 
phraseology.  That  undoubtedly  has  changed. 
To  the  old  ideals  we  have  given  a  wider  sig- 
nificance, in  some  cases,  and  strange  new 
names;  we  have  invented  a  disturbingly  scien- 
tific terminology  to  replace  the  vaguer,  simpler 
nomenclature  of  our  forbears.  Faith,  Hope, 
and  Love  are  still  the  cardinal  virtues,  but  as 
frequently  as  not  we  disguise  them  un(^r  the 
pretentious  titles  of  Economic  Adjustment, 
Social  Unrest,  and  Race  Culture,  or  similar 
phrases.  But  in  actual  practice  the  problems 
are  always  the  same — to  walk  uprightly  and 
humbly,  to  love  mercy  and  justice,  are  the  un- 
changing ideals  among  men. 
"^^^ Ardent  souls,  ready  to  construct  their  com- 
ing lives  J  are  apt  to  commit  themselves  to  the 
fulfilment  of  their  own  visions/^  What  George 
Eliot's  own  vision  was  her  work  has  shown  us. 
In  nothing  was  it  clearer  or  more  close  to  ful- 


RATIONAL   IDEALISM  21 

filment  than  where  it  touched  upon  the  delicate 
adjustment  of  women  to  societ^tj  What  the 
factors  were  which  entered  into  the  perception 
thus  recorded,  this  is  not  the  place  to  state. 
Undoubtedly,  however,  personal  experience 
figured  largely  to  produce  an  exceptional  un- 
derstanding of  the' currents  and  cross  currents 
which  make  for  a  sound  social  morality.  Above 
all,  her  work  is  founded  on  a  plain  conscious- 
ness of  the  fundamental  realities  of  societv, 
Thereis  nothing  exotic  or  unnatural  about  her 
attitude.  Realism  is  the  basis  of  her  artistic 
skill.    In  this  realistic  attitude  is  shown  the  lit- 


erary manifestation  of  the  much-Taunted  scien- 
tific spirit  of  the  past  century.  Where  both  are 
rightly  conceived  neither  science  nor  idealism 
need  fear  each  other,  for  their  end  is  the  same. 
Whereas  the  scientist  looks  at  the  instrument 
by  which  the  change  is  to  be  brought  about, 
the  idealist  regards  the  personality  which  is  to 
achieve  it.  The  union  of  these  two  points  of 
view  produces  great  realistic  art. 

How  these  two  elements  may  be  divorced, 
and  what  results  therefrom  forms  a  separate 


22         GEOEGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  H^iRDY 

study.  In  Hardy  there  is  an  example  of  what 
passes  as  the  scientific  attitude,  independent 
of  moral  or  social  restraints,  operating  in  the 
field  of  literature.  What  can  be  achieved  by 
this  method,  and  what  are  its  shortcomings, 
it  is  the  purpose  of  subsequent  discussion  to 
show.  By  contrast  with  George  Eliot,  the 
differences  between  the  new  and  the  old  hu- 
manitarianism  become  apparent,  and  the  need 
for  a  rational  idealism  gains  in  emphasis. 


II 


HARDY  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 
SPIRIT 

THE  gulf  between  George  Eliot  and 
Thomas  Hardy,  though  a  short  one  in 
point  of  time,  represents  an  immeasurable 
change  in  point  of  view.  Those  who  admire 
Hardy  are  accustomed  to  credit  him  with  al- 
most unbounded  authority  m  the  interpreta- 
tion of  jthe^ljf^_he  pictures,  with  ajprofound 
knowledge  of  the  subtleties  of  human  charac- 
ter, and  with  a  comprehensive  philosophy  to 
explain  his  observations.  Granting  these,  it  is 
not  far  to  the  conclusion  that  here  is  ajfeal; 
realist.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  qualifications 
necessary  in  this  connection  are  many  and  va- 
rious. fOf  realism,  in  the  sense  in  which  that 
term  applies  to  George^Eliot,  there  is  but  lit- 
tle.   In  her  case  there  is  a  humanism  which  is 

"23  ■^■"'    — 


24        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAEDY 

practically  not  far  removed  from  the  scientific 
spirit,  characteristic  both  of  her  century  and 
the  present,  V^ich  is  utterly  lacking  in  Hardy. 
Hardy  is  the  romantic  decadent,  and  this 
shows  in  his  entire  attitude  toward  life  and  lit- 
erature. 

^  The  contrasts  are  interesting  and  suggestive. 
The  essence  of  the  scientific  spirit  is  candid, 
impartial  vision,  which  is  incapable  of  ignoring 
data  which  may  interfere  with  theory;  it  is  a 
straightforward  recognition  of  all  known  as- 
pects of  a  given  problem,  and  an  honest  at- 
tempt to  evolve  from  the  inchoate  body  of  in- 
formation a  law  or  principle  to  consort  with  the 
wholej>  As  in  the  natural  sciences,  so  in  litera- 
ture. The  realist  must  proceed  in  the  same 
spirit.  And  this  is  not  of  necessity  inconsist- 
ent with  strong  moral  or  artistic  purpose, 
though  the  desire  to  heighten  an  effect  or 
strengthen  a  case  by  misrepresentation  or  even 
distortion  of  facts  must  be  reckoned  as  one  of 
the  temptations  of  the  undertaking. 

It  is  in  this  spirit  that  George  Eliot  writes. 
She  makes  no  effort  to  narrow  her  field  except 


HAEDY  AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT        25 

as  the  outlook  of  her  characters  narrows  it  for 
her.  On  the  other  hand,  she  does  not  unduly 
widen  it  beyond  their  horizon.  TShe  does  not 
confine  herself  to  the  limitation^  of  a  single 
rank  or  class,  or  to  certain  forms  of  experience 
within  the  group.  All  phases  of  life  are  por- 
trayed, ^omola  ministers  to  her  blind  father, 
catalogues  his  books,  consults  her  guardian 
about  trivial  household  affairs,  and  at  the  same 
time  follows  the  combined  guidance  of  her  rea- 
son and  her  affection  in  the  conduct  of  her  life 
with  Tito.  It  is  always  necessary  for  her  to 
feed  her  poor  and  carry  out  her  daily  tasks, 
whatever  her  mental  anguish.  Thus  the  analy- 
sis of  the  underlying  motives  and  passions 
gains  force  and  intensity  from  its  setting. 
Adam  Bede  carries  his  idealism  into  his  work- 
shop as  into  his  home: 

I  can't  abide  to  see  men  throw  away  their 
tools  i'  that  way,  the  minute  the  clock  strikes, 
as  if  they  took  no  pleasure  in  their  work,  and 
was  afraid  of  doing  a  stroke  too  much.  .  .  . 
I  hate  to  see  a  man's  arms  drop  down  as  if  he 
was  shot,  before  the  clock's  fairly  struck,  just 


26        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

as  if  he'd  never  a  bit  o'  pride  and  delight  in  's 
work.  The  very  grindstone  'ull  go  on  turning 
a  bit  after  you  loose  it. 

Such  a  man  is  never  wholly  detached  in  his 
personal  griefs  and  misgivings  from  the  daily 
tasks  which  make  up  the  common  round  of  life. 
He  is  never  dissociated  from  his  fellow  mortals 
except  in  the  skill  of  his  apologist.  The 
stream  of  life  that  carries  him  along  is  not  un- 
usual in  any  respect.  It  is  made  up  of  hum- 
drum occurrences,  lights  and  shadows,  dark 
places  and  clear,  all  deftly  manipulated  to  show 
without  exaggeration  what  lies  within. 

This  is  the  scientific  spirit  in  the  inclusion  of 
material.  The  next  business  is  the  classifica- 
tion, analysis,  and  assaying  of  the  material 
which  is  thus  comprehended.  This  is  nothing 
less  than  the  critical  attitude,  which  tests  all 
things  impartially,  approves  whatsoever  is 
lovely  and  of  good  report,  while  rejecting  the 
unworthv^^rtions  of  that  which  comes  within 
its  viewl  \George  Eliot  is  never  afraid  to  face 
facts.  The  tragic  end  of  all  Lydgate's  ambi- 
tions, the  pitiful  inadequacy  of  the  opportunity 


HARDY   AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT        27 

vouchsafed  to  Dorothea  Brookejand  the 
broken  music  of  Romola's  life,  all  receive  due 
attention.  yThere  is  never  any  lack  of  sym- 
pathy, or  euphemism ;  but  the  euphemism  never 
conceals  or  befogs  the  issue.  There  is  a  tact 
in  the  handling  of  powerful  themes  and  crude 
passions  which  softens  their  harshnesses  with- 
out obscuring  the  issues  involved.  Calling  a 
spade  a  spade,  while  traditionally  excellent,  is 
not  always  the  most  effective  way  of  opposing 
an  undesirable  condition^^ne  is  reminded  of 
Stevenson's  delightful  sentence: 


Thus,  when  a  young  lady  has  angelic  fea- 
tures, eats  nothing  to  speak  of,  plays  all  day 
on  the  piano,  and  sings  ravishingly  in  church, 
it  requires  a  rough  infidelity,  falsely  called 
cynicism,  to  believe  that  she  may  be  a  little 
devil  after  all.  Yet  so  it  is;  she  may  be  a  tale- 
bearer, a  liar,  and  a  thief;  she  may  have  a 
taste  for  brandy  and  no  heart.  My  compli- 
ments to  George  Eliot  for  her  Rosamond 
Vincy;  the  ugly  work  of  satire  she  has  trans- 
muted to  the  ends  of  art  by  the  companion  fig- 
ure of  Lydgate;  and  the  satire  was  much 
wanted  for  the  education  of  young  men.  ' 


28        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

The  critical  attitude  is  none  the  less  power- 
ful for  being  accompanied  by  reticence  and  del- 
icacy of  feeling. 

Finally,  the  purpose  for  which  the  investi- 
gation is  undertaken  differs  in  the  humanistic 
realist  from  that  which  moves  a  naturalist  like 
Ilctrdy.  George  Eliot  has  a  moral  purpose, — 
sometimes,  irnmstTbMTtJTTnfessed,  too  intrustte, 
— which  spurs  her  to  show  the  follies,  the  weak- 
nesses, and  the  sins  of  those  whom  she  por- 
trays. /  These  are  always  shown  as  excrescences 
which  disfigure  the  constructive  ideal  which 
fills  her  mind.  Even  her  notable  failures  must 
be  reckoned  as  attempts  to  embody  this  ideal; 
but  it  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  that  she 
should  fail  in  the  representation  of  human 
characters  wholly  without  flaw  or  blemish. 
There  is  only  one  convincing  record  of  such  a 
personality  in  literature,  and  this  is  marred  by 
the  stigmata  of  Calvary. 

Of  scientific  spirit  in  this  sense  there  is  none 
in  Hardy.  He  makes  no  attempt  to  reproduce 
the  life  of  the  Wessex  towns  in  anything  like 


HARDY   AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT        29 

its    completeness    and    probable    soundness. 
Under  the  Greenwood  Tree  and  Far  trom 
the  Madding  CromtZ  are  the  only  novels  in 
which  the  sexual  passion  plays  no  more  than  a  i 
normal  "part  in  the  development  of  character,- 1 
In  Jude  the  Obscure  the  author  is  frankly  i 

interested  only  in  studying  the  effect  upon  a  Kxfi  ^^^'^ 
particular  organism  of  the  two  sensual  pas- 
sions, love  and  the  thirst  for  strong  drink.  His  [ 
studies  are  of  degenerate  or  degenerating  char- 
acter,  or  of  character  fluctuating  under  every         ^oj 
breath  of  inclination  or  circumstance.     Here\  ^' 
are  folk  with  neither  morals  nor  ideals,  who^ 
are  utterly  without  principle  upon  which  to/ 
base  their  action.  J  Such  a  drifting  character 
^   ^is  Tess;  Dr.  Fitzpiers  of  The  Woodlanders 
\j      is  another,  as  is  Mrs.  Charmond,  the  lady  of  his 
jr^-i>^  affections.     Eustacia  Vye  and  Wildeve  are 
^^         another  pair  who  show  the  same  qualities ;  and 
because  the  descriptions  of  the  latter  are  so 
characteristic  both  of  Hardy's  men  in  gen- 
eral, and  of  this  peculiarity  in  his  point  of 
view,  they  should  be  quoted  here : 


30         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

He  was  quite  a  young  man,  and  of  the  two 
properties,  form  and  motion,  the  latter  first  at- 
tracted the  eye  to  him.  The  grace  of  his  move- 
ment was  singular;  it  was  the  pantomimic  ex- 
pression of  a  lady-killing  career.  Next  came 
into  notice  the  more  material  qualities,  among 
which  was  a  profuse  crop  of  hair  impending 
over  the  top  of  his  face,  lending  to  his  forehead 
the  high-cornered  outline  of  an  early  Gothic 
shield,  and  a  neck  which  was  smooth  and  round 
as  a  cylinder.  The  lower  half  of  his  figure 
was  of  a  light  build.  Altogether  he  was  one 
in  whom  no  man  would  have  seen  anything  to 
admire,  and  no  woman  would  have  seen  any- 
thing to  dislike.  .  .  . 

To  be  yearning  for  the  difficult,  to  be  weary 
of  the  offered;  to  care  for  the  remote,  to  dis- 
like the  near;  it  was  Wildeve's  nature  always. 
This  is  the  true  mark  of  the  man  of  sentiment. 
Though  Wildeve's  fevered  feeling  had  not  been 
elaborated  to  real  poetical  compass,  it  was  of 
the  standard  sort.  He  might  have  been  called 
the  Rousseau  of  Egdon. 

In  none  of  these  cases  is  the  wrongdoing 
the  result  of  positive  wickedness.  Fitzpiers 
is  in  nowise  to  blame  for  his  sudden  attach- 
ment to  the  mistress  of  Hintock  Manor — he 
had  never  seen  her  until  after  his  marriage  to 


HARDY   AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT         31 

Grace  Melbury.  Tess  was  fated  not  to  meet 
the  perfect  complement  to  her  own  nature  un- 
til after  the  fatal  connection  with  Alec  D'Ur- 
berville,  and  deserved  no  blame  for  her  weak- 
ness; and  so  with  Eustacia's  lover.  There  is 
neither  constancy  nor  spiritual  integrity 
among  these  folk,  with  but  rare  exceptions, 
and  these  are  generally  of  slight  interest  for 
the  author. 

Closely  allied  with  his  concern  for  special 
phases  of  experience  only,  comes  the  cognate 
attempt  to  reproduce  the  psychology  of  abnor- 
mal sex  development.  There  is  scarcely  a 
novel  or  a  tale  which  does  not  contain  the  fig- 
ure of  an  over-sexed  man  or  woman,  or  of  both, 
whose  unconscious  and  unrestrained  indulg- 
ences form  the  mainstay  of  the  story,  if  they 
are  not  actually  the  whole  material  of  the  plot. 
This  is  true  in  The  Return  of  the  Native,  in 
Jude  the  Obscure,  and  in  A  Pair  of  Blue 
Eyes,  to  mention  cases  almost  at  random. 
Characters  who  start  with  normal  sympathies 
and  aims,  such  as  Thomasin  Yeobright,  are 
distorted  by  contact  with  these,  and  woven  into 


32        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

a  phantasmagoric  vision  qf  sin  and  corruption, 
hopeless  of  cure,  and  often  unconsidered  in  its 
true  figure  of  disease.  Two  characteristic  de- 
scriptions of  women  will  serve  to  bring  home 
the  peculiarities  of  the  type,  both  for  itself  and 
in  its  relations  to  the  men  of  Hardy's  imagina- 
tion. The  first,  and  simplest,  illustration  is 
taken  from  The  Mayor  of  Casterhiidge: 

Lucetta,  as  a  young  girl,  would  hardly  have 
looked  at  a  tradesman.  But  her  bereavements 
and  impoverishments,  capped  by  her  indiscre- 
tions in  relation  to  Henchard,  had  made  her 
uncritical  as  to  station.  In  her  poverty  she  had 
met  with  repulse  from  the  society  to  which  she 
belonged,  and  she  had  no  zest  for  renewing  her 
attempt  upon  it  now.  Her  erratic  heart  longed 
for  some  ark  into  which  it  could  fly  and  be 
at  rest.  Rough  or  smooth,  she  did  not  care, 
so  long  as  it  was  warm. 

More  subtle  in  its  implications  is  the  picture 
of  Mrs.  Charmond,  as  she  appeared  to  Grace 
Melbury  on  the  occasion  of  the  girFs  first  visit 
to  her : 

*'Do,"  she  said,  leaning  back  in  her  chair  and 
placing  her  hand  above  her  forehead,  while  her 


HARDY   AND   THE   SCffiNTIFIC   SPIRIT        33 

almond  eyes — those  long  eyes  so  common  to 
early  Italian  art — became  longer  and  her  voice 
more  languishing.  She  showed  that  oblique- 
mannered  softness  which  is  perhaps  most  fre- 
quent in  women  of  darker  complexion  and 
more  lymphatic  temperament  than  Mrs.  Char- 
mond  was;  who  lingeringly  smile  their  mean- 
ings to  men  rather  than  speak  them,  who  in- 
veigle rather  than  prompt,  and  take  advantage 
of  currents  rather  than  steer. 


/i 


There  is  everything  in  the  customary  life  of 
the  farms  and  hamlets  to  foster  such  excesses. 
Hardy  is  not  content  with  placing  abnormal 
people  into  normal  circumstances  of  life,  as 
nature  generally  is ;  he  must  add  to  the  squalor 
and  sordidness  conditions  which  shall  emphati- 
cally preclude  the  possibility  of  escape  from 
environment  or  heredity — on  the  whole,  a  quite 
unnecessary  provision,  since  without  this  ad- 
ditional handicap  the  situation  was  sufficiently 
adverse^ 

"Science  is  the  systematic  classification  of 
experience,"  said  George  Henry  Lewes.  There 
is  nothing  in  this  view  of  human  life  to  justify 
one  in  considering  Hardy's  point  of  view  sci- 


34        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

^  entific.  There  remains  the  question  of  whether 
he  is  scientific  in  his  handling  of  his  theme.  It 
is  generally  admitted  that  the  scientific  atti- 
tude is  in  the  last  degree  impersonal,  and  in 
this  faculty  of  impersonal  representation 
Hardy  perhaps  exceeds  George  Eliot,  for  her 
sympathy  with  all  her  characters  makes  her 
attitude  by  no  means  that  of  the  detached 
omniscience  which  is  characteristic  in  the  other 
•^..^case.  The  deficiency,  if  such  it  is,  lies  in  a 
different  direction.  Science  is  always  a  matter 
of  fixed  proportion,  fluctuating,  it  may  be,  but 
exact  and  measured  in  the  flux.  Incidents  in 
Hardy  have  no  proportion  in  this  mathemati- 
•  oal  sense.  There  is  something  roughly  corre- 
^  sponding  to  the/old  theory  of  humors  in  his 
syjy\  treatment  of  character,  for  his  habit  is  to  trace 
simply  the  effect  of  a  single  passion  upon  a 
person's  life.  Jyresumably  there  were  many 
instances  where  the  normal  duties  and  con- 
cerns of  Sue  Bridehead's  life  overpowered  her 
supersensitiveness  in  matters  relating  to  the 
lusts  of  the  flesh.  But  of  these  we  have  no 
trace.    There  is  no  evidence  that  there  devel- 


;^ 


HARDY  AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT         35 

oped  in  her  any  of  the  passion  of  maternity 
which  may  fairly  be  called  one  of  the  funda- 
mentals of  womanhood,  be  it  never  so  per- 
verted. The  murder  of  her  children  affects 
her  only  in  its  bearing  on  her  own  tangled 
theory  and  practice  of  sex-relations.  She  is 
typical  of  many  other  such  characters,  male  and 
female  alike. 

Such  lack  of  proportion  is  unjustifiable  on 
artistic  grounds.  It  dispels  the  illusion  of  real- 
ity either  as  to  fact  or  sentiment,  leaving  in  its 
place  only  the  sense  of  pathological  investiga- 
tion. This  seems  at  first  sight  firm,  if  unsa- 
vory, scientific  ground.  So  it  would  be,  if  it 
could  be  relied  upon.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
even  this  pillar  of  strength  is  withdrawn;  for 
there  is  no  psychological  justification  for  much 
that  forms  the  stuff  of  these  studies.  There 
are  many  errors  in  the  psychology  of  "Tess," 
unrecognized  for  reasons  which  are  presently 
to  be  noted.  A  reservation  might  be  made 
along  one  line,  however.  In  the  portraiture 
of  old  men,  in  whom  the  passion  of  love  has  be- 
come transmuted  into  the  sentiment  of  pater- 


86        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

/nity,  and  of  old  women.  Hardy  reaches  per- 
/  haps  the  truest  analysis  of  character — less  en- 
V  trancing,  to  be  sure,  than  his  pictures  of  youth- 
ful exuberance  and  vitality,  but  so  much  the 
more  natural  and  intelligible. 
>  As  to  morality,  he  is  indifferent.  Right  or 
f  wrong  makes  little  difference  in  his  presenta- 
tion ;  his  interest  is  solely  in  the  picturesque  as- 
pects of  his  material.  Science,  undoubtedly, 
knows  no  ethical  values ;  and  it  is  an  open  ques- 
tion whether  art  should  recognize  any  such  dis- 
tinctions with  greater  propriety.  Dr.  John- 
son would  answer  unhesitatingly  that  it  must, 
and  would  find  ample  room  for  censure  in  what 
would  certainly  impress  him  as  positive  immo- 
rality, or  at  best  a  perverse  inversion  of  moral 
values.  His  view  is,  of  course,  that  of  an  ex- 
tremist. But  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  to  the 
opposite  pole  as  has  been  the  custom  in  the  re- 
action from  the  older  formalism,  and  to  exclude 
all  ethical  values  from  the  province  of  art  en- 
tirely. The  only  demand  which  we  may  rigidly 
enforce  upon  the  artist  is  that  of  truth  to  fact 
and  sentiment,  so  that  we  may  be  sure  of  an 


HARDY   AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC    SPIRIT        37 

honest  attempt  to  achieve  the  ideal  formulated 
by  Joubert, — "The  ordinary  true,  or  purely 
real,  cannot  be  the  object  of  the  arts.  Illusion 
on  a  ground  of  truth — that  is  the  secret  of  the 
fine  arts." 

The  ideal  of  life  which  Hardy  develops  is 
one  which  allows  only  degeneration  to  the  in- 
dividual. Even  the  forces  which  seem  to  lead 
to  the  highest  and  most  hopeful  development 
meet  invariable  checks  and  cross-currents 
which  bring  them  to  nothing.  Hardy's  char- 
acters never  pass  from  a  lower  to  a  higher 
spirituality,  as  George  Eliot's  frequently  do; 
they  are  bound  on  the  wheel  of  life  which  in- 
exorably breaks  them  in  its  revolutions.  Self- 
control  is  an  impossibility,  and  indeed  unneces- 
sary,  for  where  fate  is  all-powerful,  control 
or  intemperance  are  alike  unable  to  avert  the 
catastrophe  or  determine  happiness.  Thus, 
there  is  nothing  to  be  gained  by  striving,  no 
value  in  effort,  no  hope  of  salvation  either  by 
faith  or  by  works.  This  is  contrary  to  the  spirit 
of  scientific  research,  which  looks  constantly 


38         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

forward  in  the  hope  of  solving  difficulties  in  the 
light  of  the  knowledge  already  gained. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  these  limitations,  Hardy's 
power  is  undeniable,  and  it  is  of  extreme  inter- 
est to  notice  on  what  basis  it  rests.  In  part 
it  is  due  to  the  use  of  legitimate  artistic  means, 
and  so  far  as  this  is  the  case  it  is  altogether 
praiseworthy.  There  is  no  question  that  he  has 
the  gift  of  lyric  expression  to  a  high  degree. 
Such  scenes  as  those  of  the  courtship  of  Tess 
and  Angel  Clare  in  the  dairy  at  Talbothays 
are  full  of  passionate  intensity  and  lyric  en- 
thusiasm which  lift  them  into  the  range  of  high 
literature.  This  is  the  effect  of  remarkable 
stylistic  gifts,  and  the  result  of  genuine  artistic 
feeling. 

But  after  this  legitimate  power  is  exhausted. 
Hardy  makes  use  of  another  which  is  more 
questionable.  He  does  not  hesitate  to  describe 
with  lavish  detail  the  circumstances  which  lead 
up  to  acts  of  violence  or  brutality.  This  is  in 
the  name  of  psychological  analy^s,  perhaps. 
Very  well.  These  crimes  and^^misdeeds  are 
almost  invariably  those  resulting  from  some 


HARDY   AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT        39 

perversion  of  the  sex-instinct,  which,  as  a  gen- 
eral rule,  is  consciously  stimulated  by  one  or 
another  of  the  parties  concerned.  In  this  con- 
nection it  is  interesting  to  notice  the  recurrence 
of  a  special  vocabulary  to  increase  the  sugges- 
tiveness  at  which  he  aims.  The  word  "stultify'* 
occurs  with  frequency.  "Fervid"  and  "per- 
fervid"  and  similar  words  are  of  common  oc- 
currence. So  also  the  adjective  used  to  de- 
scribe Tess'  physical  perfections  in  the  follow- 
ing sentence:  "This  morning  the  eye  returns  in- 
voluntarily to  the  girl  in  the  pink  cotton  jacket, 
she  being  the  most  fleccuous  and  finely  drawn 
figure  of  them  all."  By  stylistic  tricks  like 
these,  whether  consciously  or  unconsciously,  he 
predisposes  to  a  somewhat  unhealthy  mental 
position.  For  aptly  chosen  words  may  have 
the  same  stimulating  effect  as  music.  There  is 
no  astringent  principle  in  handling  these 
themes,  like  that  which  in  the  older  literature  is 
supplied  by  the  belief  in  conscience  and  the 
moral  law,  to  counteract  the  freedom  of  man- 
ners and  conduct  which  is  practised.  There  is 
no  power  of  free-will. 


40        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAUDY 

Having  thus  established  his  atmosphere  by 
the  use  of  natural  artistry  and  artificial  sugges- 
tion, Hardy  makes  use  of  it  to  further  develop 
an  illegitimate  end.  Jude  the  Obscure  is  a 
revolt  against  the  usual  conditions  of  mar- 
riage. This  is  the  most  elaborate  case,  but  it  is 
by  no  means  exceptional.  The  theme  recurs 
with  unfailing  regularity.  Revolt  against  the 
traditional  standards  of  sexuaTmoralit}^  isT;he 
basis  of  every  novel  in  some  fashion,  and  this 
leads  insensibly  to  the  development  of  cognate 
anarchies.  The  individualistic  fallacy  cnes 
olS't  from  every  page. 

The  foregoing  is  a  bald  statement  of  the 
moral  positions  involved.  No  one  will  ques- 
tion the  legitimacy  of  an  artist's  use  of  all  his 
skill  in  developing  his  thesis:  but  it  is  a  fair 
question  whether  he  has  a  right  to  gain  his  ef- 
fects by  pandering  to  the  least  worthy  instincts 
and  prejudices  of  his  readers.  Sometimes,  of 
course,  he  may  justify  the  means  by  the  end  to 
b^attained.^  In  the  cases  where  there  is  a  fully 
developed  philosophy  of  life,  the  justification 
may  fairly  rest  on  this.    We  may  then  ask  with 


HARDY   AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC    SPIRIT         41 

propriety  how  this  counteracts  or  confirms  the 
recognizably  illegitimate  means  by  which  it  is 
expressed. 

Hardy's  philosophy  is,  as  might  be  inferred, 
one  which  glorifies^the  liberty  of  the  individual 
in  all  matters  of  conduct  and  behavior.  Tfeere^ 
never  occurs  to  any  of  his  folk  the  question  of 
their  relation  to  society  at  large  or  the  possi- 
bility of  duties  toward  any  save  their  own  in- 
dividualities. It  becomes,  therefore,  a  matter 
of  pity  rather  than  censure  when,  in  following 
the  dictates  of  individual  conscience,  one  or 
another  hapless  wight  incurs  the  traditional  re- 
proach and  contumely  with  which  society,  as  at 
present  constituted,  visits  offenders.  The  iron- 
ies which  Hardy  perceives  in  life  are  really, 
laothing  less  than  the  discrepancies  between  "ac- 
tion induced  by  the  individual  perception  of 
moral  relations  and  those  traditionally  acj 
cepted  by  social  usage.  _  This  individual  liberty 
is  particularly  to  be  exercised  in  those  personal 
relations  between  men  and  women  which  seem, 
on  the  surface,  to  be  matters  of  individual  con- 
cern only,  but  which  are  more  and  more  being 


42         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

recognized  as  charged  with  a  significance  of 
which  society  at  large  must  take  cognizance. 

Of  the  right  or  wrong  of  such  a  philosophy 
this  is  not  the  place  to  speak.  The  outstanding 
fact  is  that  here  is  a  view  of  life  antagonistic  to 
any  which  has  stood  the  test  of  successful  prac- 
tice, enforced  by  a  series  of  pictures  which  have 
no  relation  to  actual  conditions,  and  which 
serve  only  to  emphasize  the  individual  belief 
of  their  author.  No  remedy  is  possible,  for  no 
real  condition  has  been  shown.  'No  social 
changes  are  possible,  for  no  definitely  recogniz- 
able evils  have  been  exposed.  Hardy's  philoso- 
phy is  formed  to  explain  and  justify  circum- 
stances invented  and  elaborated  in  romantic 
indifference  to  the  usual  business  of  life.  It  is 
utterly  foreign  to  the  scientific  ideals  of  the  ma- 
jority of  the  generation  which  produced  it. 

The  scientific  spirit  is  that  in  which  George 
Eliot  conducts  her  representation  of  provincial 
life.  Not  only  does  she  seek  fidelity  to  the 
facts  of  life,  but  also  fidelity  to  humankind 
itself.  This  has  been  the  path  of  sane  realism. 
Hardy  is  but  following  the  fashion,  set  by  Con- 


HARDY  AND   THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT        43 

tinental  novelists,  of  searching  for  the  heart  of 
man  at  one  of  the  extremes  of  development, 
and  choosing  for  that  purpose  those  who  are  of 
the  lower  ranks  of  spiritual  creation.  George 
Eliot  shows  the  limitations  imposed  on  her 
by  the  medium  through  which  she  works.  In 
fiction,  even  of  the  realistic  sort,-  we  still  insist 
upon  a  hero,  a  heroine,  and  a  villain,  after  the 
old  melodramatic  style,  but  thinly  disguised. 
For  the  villain,  indeed,  we  have  developed  new 
attributes  and  powers.  Society,  alcoholism, 
heredity,  are  some  of  the  newer  names  for  an 
old  acquaintance.  In  the  novels  of  George  El- 
iot there  is  rarely  a  hero,  never  a  villain,  and 
only  occasionally  a  heroine.  Certain  characters 
there  are  whose  fortunes  are  made  pivotal,  per- 
sons around  whom  the  lives  of  a  group  center ; 
but  no  one  of  these  is  of  greater  intrinsic  im- 
portance than  another.  In  a  measure  this  is 
traceable  to  the  leisurely  method  of  an  older 
generation,  which  allowed  space  for  detail  such 
as  a  modern  novelist,  willing  or  not,  must 
forego.    But  it  is  also  the  result  of  an  impartial 


44        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

and  open-minded  attitude  toward  life  which 
recognizes  no  limitations  of  interest. 

In  this  day  of  excessive  enthusiasm  for  the 
uplift  of  women,  the  difference  between  the 
scientific  attitude,  which  is  essentially  the  criti- 
cal attitude,  and  the  emotional  one,  may  best 
be  discerned  and  analyzed  in  relation  to  the 
woman  question  so-called.  The  problem  of  the 
normal  woman  as  well  as  that  of  the  abnor- 
mal woman  may  serve  as  a  touchstone  by 
which  to  test  and  determine  values.  It  is  only 
by  some  such  study  that  we  can  understand  the 
principles  involved  in  such  a  radical  difference 
of  outlook  as  presented  by  George  Eliot  and 
Hardy. 


Ill 

WEAK  SISTERS 

PERHAPS  no  point  of  contrast  among 
many  between  Thomas  Hardy  and 
George  Eliot  is  more  striking  than  their  treat- 
mentof  womanhood.  It  is  not  merely  the 
difference  in  perspective  between  a  man's  view 
and  a  woman's ;  neither  is  it  a  question  of  sev- 
eral years'  difference  in  point  of  time;  it  is 
a  fundamental  contrast  in  point  of  view,  to 
explain  which  leads  into  a  long  study  of  con- 
ditions and  conventions.  To  say  that  Hardy's 
attitude  is  French  is  simply  to  evade  the  is- 
sue. If  that  were  the  distinction,  however, 
the  question  would  still  be  legitimate ;  What  is 
it  that  separates  the  French  from  other  atti- 
tudes toward  women?  It  is  in  reality  a  view 
of  the  relations  between  normal  and  abnormal 

women,  often  complicated  to  mean  the  relation- 

15 


46        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

ships  between  good  and  bad  women,  and  opens 
in  all  its  diversity  the  comparison  between 
women  whose  lives  are  in  accord  with  the  con- 
ventional restrictions  of  society  and  those  who, 
by  their  own  or  another's  act,  are  placed  out- 
side the  pale  of  moral  approbation. 

This  distinction  between  the  Latin  and  the 
Anglo-Saxon  view  of  women  is  based  on  vary- 
ing conceptions  of  the  relation  of  woman  to 
society  at  large.  If  she  be  regarded  wholly  as 
a  creature  whose  value  lies  solely  in  her  sex,— 
as  the  emphasis  is  in  Latin  society, — it  follows 
that  in  literature  colored  by  such  a  view  she 
will  be  treated  as  subject,  chiefly,  if  not  en- 
tirely, to  those  emotional  states  and  crises  which 
relate  only  to  the  development  and  necessities 
of  sexual  life.  This  is  Hardy's  attitude  in 
the  main.  A  characteristic  sentence  may  be 
quoted  in  evidence  thereof.  It  is  part  of  the 
description  of  Tess  as  she  appeared  before  the 
seduction  by  Alec  D'Urberviile:  "Tess  Dur- 
beyfield  at  this  time  of  her  life  was  a  mere 
vessel  of  emotion,  untinctured  by  experience." 
Hardy's  stories  are  of  the  mating,  mismating, 


WEAK  SISTERS  47 

and  unmating  of  men  and  women,  ignoring  \ 
the  existence  of  any  other  motives  as  determin-  • 
ing  factors  in  human  intercourse.  Even  in 
a  book  like  Jude  the  Obscure^  where  in  Sue 
Bridehead  he  tries  to  picture  a  woman  rela- 
tively free  from  the  dominion  of  sex,  he  suc- 
ceeds only  in  creating  an  impression  of  sexual 
irresponsibility.  The  whole  story  of  The  Re- 
turn of  the  Native  is  the  story  of  tlje  malad- 
justment in  these  relations  of  an  oversexed 
woman. 

On  such  a  basis  it  is  necessarily  impossible  \ 
to  rear  a  structure  of  sound  morality — or,  in-  i 
deed,  of  morality  in  any  sense;  for  morality  \ 
rests  fundamentally  upon  the  power  of  the  in-  I 
dividual  to  control  his  physical  impulses.     If  I 
to  women  are  denied  these  essential  means  to 
grace,  it  leaves  them,  very  properly,  in  some- 
what the  relation  to  an  androcentric  world 
which  Tennyson  so  bitterly  decried: 

He  will  hold  j^ou,  when  his  passion  shall  have 

spent  its  novel  force. 
Something  better  than  his  dog,  a  little  dearer 

than  his  horse. 


48        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

Such  is  essentially  the  Latin  attitude  toward 
womankind. 

At  the  other  extreme  is  the  conception  which 
we  take  pride,  somewhat  unduly,  in  calling 
Anglo-Saxon.  It  is  not  always,  perhaps,  a 
genuine  thing  with  us;  but  rather  one  which 
we  hold  up  to  the  public  gaze  as  an  evidence 
of  superiority,  but  to  whidi  our  practice  does 
not  necessarily  conform,  v  It  is  an  ideal  of  wo- 
manhood which  allowj  participation  of  both 
sexes  equally  in  the  affairs  of  life,  and  grants 
to  woman  as  to  man  the  opportunity  of  shap- 
ing destinies  and  fortunes  more  far-reaching 
than  her  own.  ,It  is  for  this  ideal  that  the  so- 
called  feminists  of  the  present  day  are  striving, 
often  with  blundering  and  through  many  mis- 
takes, but  with  the  firm  intention  of  emphasis- 
ing and  establishing  past  question  the  woman's 
right  to  equal  recognition  and  power  with  the 
man.  The  feminist  attitude  is  concerned  with 
the  woman  in  industry,  in  public  life,  in  ever 
increasing  spheres  of  public  usefulness  and  eco- 
nomic importance. 

The  woman  who  is  capable  of  this  develop- 


WEAK   SISTERS  49 

merit  and  of  this  consideration  is  not  repre- 
sented in  Hardy.  Instead,  it  is  her  weaker  sis- 
ter who  holds  the  centre  of  interest — the 
woman  who  li3:£aJiy..l£ason  of  her  sex,  and  for 
no  other  purpose.  Such  a  woman,  at  herTSest, 
is  cap^l^  of  a  liigh  and  sensitive  emotional 
life,  even,  it  may  be,  the  refinement  of  grace 
and  charm,  but  she  holds  no  power  over  the 
minds  of  those  around  her.  Sue  Bridehead  is 
perhaps  the  most  elaborate  study  of  this  type 
which  Hardy  has  made.  From  this  point, 
through  all  the  varying  degrees  of  fineness, 
down  to  the  utter  vulgarity  of  Arabella  Donn, 
he  has  traced  the  infiuence  of  such  women. 
With  all  the  changes  of  accent  which  are  in- 
duced by  differing  situations  he  nevertheless 
preserves  the  same  sentiment  which  makes  the 
lure  of  such  a  portrait  as  this  of  Tess: 

She  had  stretched  one  arm  so  high  above 
her  coiled-up  cable  of  hair  that  he  could  see 
its  delicacy  above  the  sunburn;  her  face  was 
flushed  with  sleep  and  her  eyelids  hung  heavy 
over  their  pupils.  The  hrimfulness  of  her  na- 
ture breathed  from  her.  It  was  a  moment  when 


50         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

a  woman's  soul  is  more  incarnate  than  at  any 
other  time ;  when  the  most  spiritual  beauty  in- 
clines to  the  corporeal;  and  sex  takes  the  out- 
side place  in  her  presentation. 

At  their  lowest  these  women  are  the  pitiable 
creatures  of  whom  we  think  with  sorrow  not 
unmixed  with  horror.  Of  our  attitude  toward 
them,  Hardy's  is  typical.  The  whole  justifi- 
cation of  Tess  is  contained  in  the  sub-title: 
The  Story  of  a  Pure  Woman.  It  is  dis- 
tinctly significant  that  his  attempt  is  this  of 
rehabilitation,  for  the  act  of  rehabilitation  itself 
indicates  a  slackening  of  moral  fibre,  a  relaxa- 
tion of  the  tension  which  is  the  mark  of  the 
times  in  which  we  live.  Not  that  there  can  be 
too  much  of  sympathetic  pity  for  the  misfor- 
tune and  degradation  involved  in  a  social  or- 
der which  permits  the  development  of  such 
lives ;  but  even  then  there  rises  up  for  thought- 
ful consideration  the  necessity  for  some  re- 
straint which  shall  effectively  meet  the  evil  and 
combat  it.  To  Hardy,  the  story  of  Tess  Dur- 
beyfield  is  that  of  a  creature  formed  for  love 
and  the  gratification  of  love,  forced  by  an  in- 


WEAK   SISTERS  51 

eYitable,and  inexorable  chain  of  circumstance 
into  actions  which  have  for  centuries  borne  the 
disapprobation  of  the  world.  We  may  regard 
the  descriptions  of  her  as  characteristic  of  the 
author  and  of  women  in  his  thought : 

It  was  a  thousand  pities,  indeed,  it  was  im- 
possible for  even  an  enemy  to  feel  otherwise 
on  looking  at  Tess  as  she  sat  there,  with  her 
flower-like  mouth  and  large  tender  eyes, 
neither  black  nor  blue  nor  grey  nor  violet;  ra- 
ther all  those  shades  together  and  a  hundred 
others,  which  could  be  seen  if  one  looked  into 
their  irises — shade  behind  shade — tint  beyond 
tint — round  depths  that  had  no  bottom;  an  al- 
most typical  woman,  but  for  the  slight  incau- 
tiousness  of  character  inherited  from  her  race. 

She  is  the  vehicle  for  all  emotion,  the  ^olian 
harp  on  which  every  breath  of  fancy  may  make 
music : 

Tess  was  conscious  of  neither  time  nor  space 
[listening  to  Angel  Clare's  music].  The  ex- 
altation which  she  had  described  as  being  pro- 
ducible at  will  by  gazing  at  a  star  came  now 
without  any  determination  of  hers;  she  undu- 
lated upon  the  thin  notes  as  upon  billows,  and 


52        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

their  harmonies  passed  like  breezes  through  her, 
bringing  tears  to  her  eyes.  The  floating  pollen 
seemed  to  be  his  notes  made  visible,  and  the 
dampness  of  the  garden,  the  weeping  of  the 
garden's  sensibility.  Though  near  nightfall, 
the  rank-smelling  weed-flowers  glowed  as  if 
they  would  not  close  for  intentness,  and  the 
waves  of  color  mixed  with  the  waves  of  sound. 


\       Hardy's  whole  thesis  is  the  essential  blame- 
I  lessness  of  the  woman  under  all  the  "bludgeon- 
j  ings  of  chance."     If  one  attempts  to  oppose 
Vthis  with  any  doctrine  of  absolute  right  and 
wrong,  one  is  hounded  with  the  cry,  as  odious 
to  our  ears  as  to  those  that  listened  in  "the 
spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth" — of  "Puri- 
tan," or  is  branded  with  the  no  less  opprobrious 
mark  of  "Victorian."    None  the  less,  there  re- 
mains the  truth  in  the  rigid  attitude  of  older 
days,  that  sin  is  real  and  definite,  and  reaps  a 
clear  punishment. 

But  Hardy  recognizes  nb  sin,  therefore  there 

can  be  neither  condemnation  nor  retribution. 

I  There  can  only  be  the  mantle  of  charity  which 

recognizes  an  alien  condition  and  seeks  by  its 


WEAK    SISTERS  53 

own  act  to  remove  the  barriers  which  separate 
the  outcast  from  the  ninety  and  nine  who  need 
no  repentance.  This  is  not  the  keynote  struck 
by  the  "Let  him  who  is  without  sin  cast  the  first 
stone,"  be  it  observed ;  it  is  rather  the  yielding 
tQ^  the  inevitable  which  marks  the  fatalist.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  carry  the  principle  as  far  as 
in  "Tess"  to  see  the  outcome.  There  are  in- 
numerable passages  in  which  Hardy  puts  in 
the  mouths  of  different  characters  comments  on 
the  institution  of  marriage  which  plainly  re- 
veal his  tendency.  A  typical  one  is  rather 
implied  than  expressed  in  this  sentence  from 
J<ude  the  Obscure:  "Wifedom  has  not  yet 
annihilated  and  digested  you  in  its  vast  maw  as 
an  atom  which  has  no  further  individuality." 
Such  things  as  this  cannot  be  discounted  as 
the  imaginative  rendering  of  the  views  of  a  lim- 
ited group;  they  come  from  many  walks  of 
life,  and  with  such  uniformity  of  emphasis  that 
one  cannot  doubt  that  they  reveal  a  definite 
mental  outlook.  The  general  tenor  is  that  mar- 
riage is  an  institution  whose  sacredness  and 
sacramental  force  are  nullified  by  its  legal 


54         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

status.  The  cynical  comments  of  lago  on 
good  women  are  echoed  in  varying  tones  and 
accents,  yet  always  with  the  same  sardonic 
humor: 

She  that  was  ever  fair  and  never  proua, 
Had  tongue  at  will,  and  yet  was  never  loud. 
Never  lacked  gold  and  yet  went  never  gay. 
Fled  from  her  wish,  and  yet  said,  "Now  I  may," 
She  that,  being  angered,  her  revenge  being 

nigh, 
Eade  her  wrong  stay  and  her  displeasure  fly; 
She  that  in  wisdom  never  was  so  frail 
To  change  the  cod's  head  for  the  salmon's  tail ; 
She  that  could  think  and  ne'er  disclose  her 

mind. 
See  suitors  following,  and  ne'er  look  behind; 
She  was  a  wight,  if  ever  such  wight  were 

Des.    To  do  what? 

lago.  To  suckle  fools  and  chronicle  small  beer. 

With  such  a  debased  view  of  the  potentialities 
of  marriage,  it  is  little  to  be  wondered  at  that 
the  woman  who  dares  to  live  outside  its  pre- 
cincts assumes  a  glamor  and  a  halo  to  which 
nothing  in  her  life  or  aims  entitles  her.    It  is 


WEAK   SISTERS  55 

impossible  to  censure  her  if  her  sister  within- 
the  pale  is  no  better  than  she  save  in  the  single 
respect  of  conformity  to  law. 

From  this  sort  of  contemptuous  regard  it  is 
pleasant  to  turn  to  such  a  point  of  view  as 
that  represented  by  George  Eliot.  There  are 
few  "weak  sisters"  in  George  Eliot's  novels; 
Hetty  Sorrel  and  Tessa  are  the  two  most  not- 
able, with  Maggie  Tulliver  as  a  possible  addi- 
tion,— though  this  inclusion  is  somewhat  doubt- 
ful, owing  to  the  exceptional  circumstances 
connected  with  the  character.  And  in  their 
weakness  itself  these  are  at  the  farthest  remove 
from  Tess  and  her  kind. 

The  distinctions  are  important.  And  the 
chief  of  them  lies  in  the  element  of  free-will. 
Hetty's  downfall  is  compassed  by  weakness 
and  the  force  of  circumstances,  it  is  true;  but 
there  is  never  an  instant  when  she  does  not 
know  that  wliatsheistasting  is  forbidden  fruit. 
She  goes  on  from  one  step  to  another  in  the 
full  knowledge  that  she  is  offending  against 
the  simple  code  in  which  she  has  been  brought 
up.    There  is  no  case  of  unconscious  wrong- 


56        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

doing,  as  we  are  taught  to  assume  in  Hardy. 
George  Eliot  recognizes  the  existence,  in  other 
words,  of  positive  and  undeniable  sin.  In  the 
story  of  poor  little  Tessa,  she  gives  us  an- 
other phase  of  the  same  problem — the  phase 
exemplified  by  the  ignorant  girl  who  has  no 
knowledge  to  show  her  the  instability  of  her 
fool's  paradise.  Yet,  even  here,  Tessa  has  mis- 
givings which,  had  they  been  coupled  with 
greater  intellectual  keenness,  would  have 
shown  her  the  wrong  of  which  she  was  unwit- 
tingly guilty.  Tessa  is  the  dupe  of  a  clever  and 
unscrupulous  man  by  reason  of  her  ignorance 
of  him  and  his  connections ;  but  had  she  known 
the  full  truth,  even  her  simplicity  would  not 
have  prevented  her  from  understanding  the 
moral  issues  at  stake.  In  other  words,  both 
Hetty  and  Tessa  are  creatures  acting  of  their 
own  volition  and  free  choice. 

It  follows  naturally  from  this  that  marriage 
assumes  a  far  different  color  from  that  with 
which  Hardy  invests  it. 

She  says  at  the  conclusion  of  Middle- 
march: 


WEAK  SISTERS 


57 


Marriage,  which  has  been  the  bourn  of  so 
many  narratives,  is  still  a  great  beginning  as  it 
was  to  Adam  and  Eve,  who  kept  their  honey- 
moon in  Eden,  but  had  their  first  little  one 
among  the  thorns  and  thistles  of  the  wilderness. 
It  is  still  the  beginning  of  the  home  epic — the 
gradual  conquest  or  irremediable  loss  of  that 
complete  union  which  makes  the  advancing 
years  a  climax,  and  age  the  harvest  of  sweet 
memories  in  common.  Some  set  out,  like  Cru- 
saders of  old,  with  a  glorious  equipment  of 
hope  and  enthusiasm,  and  get  broken  by  the 
way,  wanting  patience  with  each  other  and  the 
world. 

There  is  in  her  mind  no  possibility  of  extra- 
marital relations  which  can  surpass  the  legiti- 
mate relation  of  husband  and  wife.  Though 
this  relation  may  not  be  achieved,  yet  she  sees 
the  substitutes  for  it  in  their  true  light — as  the 
makeshifts  which  they  are.  Quaintnesses  in 
marriage  there  may  be;  crotchets  and  whimsi- 
calities there  often  are;  but  these  are  far  from 
being  the  excrescences  which  Hardy  shows. 
When  she  portrays  uneasiness  in  the  marital 
relation,  it  usually  arises  from  the  restlessness 
of  one  or  both  parties,  who  seek  to  weld  to- 


58         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

/gether  incompatible  elements.    There  is  never 
/  the  thought  of  escaping  the  bond,  or  of  evad- 
ing its  obligations,  even  though  the  result  be 
spiritual  death  to  one  or  both. 

It  is  notable  that  in  this  view  of  marriage 
there  are  not  only  none  of  the  elements  which 
make  it  degrading  to  the  woman,  but  none 
which  render  it  debasing  to  the  man.  The  view 
which  separates  marriage  from  prostitution 
only  by  a  legal  ceremony,  as  does  Hardy's,  is, 
in  the  last  analysis,  no  more  creditable  to  the 
man  than  to  the  woman.  Hardy's  men  are  sen- 
sualists or  emasculate;  there  is  no  middle 
ground.  This  is  the  defect  of  the  so-called 
"French"  attitude  toward  marriage.  That 
sensuality  can  exist  in  marriage  nowhere  does 
George  Eliot  deny;  but  that  it  is  the  sole  ex- 
cuse for  it  she  does  not  admit.  Her  recogni- 
tion of  the  potentialities  of  even  an  unhappy 
marriage  in  the  spiritual  growth  of  man  or 
woman  is  such  as  to  render  her  attitude  sane 
and  wholesome  even  under  the  contemplation 
of  domestic  tragedy  the  most  complete.  In  her 
attitude  toward  the  "fallen"  woman  there  is 


WEAK    SISTERS  59 

none  of  the  Pharisaism  of  mere  convention, 
but  none  of  the  sentimentalism  of  the  sensu- 
ahst. 

For  it  is  true  that  the  charity  toward  the  so- 
cial sins  which  Thomas  Hardy  inculcates  is 
nothing  else  than  the  weak  sentimentalism 
which  overlies  most  self-indulgence.  There 
IS  nothing  fundamentally  inspiring  about  the 
story  of  the  plaything  of  human  vices  and  pas- 
sions. And  when  that  bauble  is  a  woman's 
chastity,  which  through  age-long  experience 
we  have  learned  to  value  at  a  high  rate,  it  re- 
quires a  great  exercise  of  emotional  irrational- 
ity to  persuade  us  that  the  bitter  experiments 
by  which  our  knowledge  has  come  are  to  be 
overruled.  The  social  instinct  which  visits  os- 
tracism and  reprobation  on  these  offenders  is 
fundamentally  a  sound  one.  To  oppose  this 
Hardy  has  only  one  means  at  his  command, 
the  acceptance  of  which  involves  the  renuncia- 
tion of  all  our  hard-won  belief  in  the  dignity 
of  the  human  will.  If  we  are  to  say  with  him 
that  here  is  no  sin  because  no  freedom,  either 
to  righteousness  or  to  something  else,  the  case 


60        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HABDY 

rests  complete.  Under  such  a  theory  of  human 
conduct  it  is  impossible  to  make  progress  of 
any  sort. 

The  point  may  be  raised  with  propriety: 
What  of  those  women  in  Hardy's  novels  who 
do  not  incur  or  deserve  condemnation  for  their 
excesses?  This  raises  a  curious  answer.  Such 
women  are  almost  entirely  shrews  in  the  com- 
pletest  sense  of  the  term, — women  who  make 
their  husbands'  lives  unhappy  by  reason  of 
their  overbearing  behavior,  women  whose  self- 
ishness makes  any  serious  emotion  impossible 
to  them,  and  women  whose  lusts  are  concealed 
or  obscured  in  wedlock — these  are  the  only  al- 
ternatives available.  They  are  concrete  exam- 
ples of  what  the  Greek  poet  Simonides,  in  a 
bitter  satire  on  women,  described  as  the  Fox- 
liJke  group.  I  quote  from  Addison's  rendering 
{Spectator,  No.  209) :  "A  second  sort  of  fe- 
male soul  was  formed  out  of  the  same  materials 
that  enter  into  the  composition  of  a  fox.  Such 
an  one  is  what  we  call  a  notable  discerning 
woman,  who  has  an  insight  into  everything, 
whether  it  be  good  or  bad.    In  this  species  of 


WEAK   SISTERS  61 

females  there  are  some  virtuous  and  some  vi- 
cious." Nearly  all  the  women  in  A  Group  of 
Noble  Dames  will  qualify  under  this  descrip- 
tion, and  a  good  many  also  in  Lifers  Little 
Ironies  and  Wessecc  Tales, 

(Such  women  justify  the  social  reformer's 
tirade  against  "parasites."  They  are,  in  every 
sense  of  that  term,  creatures  who  prey  upon 
the  world  in  which  they  live.  In  Hardy  they 
are  specifically  parasites  in  that  they  contribute 
nothing  for  their  own  maintenance,  but  drain 
the  vitality  of  those  about  them.  Stated  in 
plain  terms  like  these  they  sound  most  unat- 
tractive and  unpromising  literary  material; 
but  this  is  owing  to  the  fact  that  we  often  fail 
to  realize  that  parasitism  is  by  no  means  in- 
compatible with  the  development  of  graces  and 
beauties  to  a  very  considerable  extent.  In  the 
physical  world  this  is  true ;  and  it  is  no  less  true 
in  the  moral  world.  Spiritual  parasites  are  the 
harder  to  deal  with  from  this  fact.  Rosamond 
Vincy  is  George  Eliot's  only  example'^df  the 
type — of  whom  she  wrote:  "She  simply  con- 
tinued to  be  mildlnTier  tempeiv  inflexible  in 


62        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

her  judgment,  disposed  to  admonish  her  hus- 
band, and  able  to  frustrate  him  by  stratagem. 
As  the  years  went  on  he  opposed  her  less  and 
less,  whence  Rosamond  concluded  that  he  had 
learned  the  value  of  her  opinion."/  Hardy's 
women,  virtuous  in  the  cant  acceptation  of  the 
term,  are  all  of  this  kind. 

That  there  is  an  ideal  higher  than  any  of 
these  George  Eliot  perceives;  though  she  rec- 
ognizes also  the  impossibility  of  giving  artistic 
expression  to  it.  She  it  was  who  gave  utter- 
ance to  that  commonplace  of  ordinary  speech 
that  "the  happiest  women,  like  peaceful  na- 
tions, have  no  history,"  from  her  realization 
that  ideal  womanhood,  and  all  womanhood  as 
it  approaches  the  ideal  standard,  must  be  meas- 
ured not  for  itself  alone,  but  as  it  appears  in  the 
lives  of  those  who  develop  from  it.  We  may 
repeat  Stevenson's  phrase  with  the  greater  con- 
currence in  such  a  view:  "When  the  genera- 
tion is  gone,  when  the  play  is  over,  when  the 
thirty  years'  panorama  has  been  withdrawn  in 
tatters  from  the  stage  of  the  world,  we  may 
ask  what  has  become  of  these  great,  weighty 


WEAK   SISTERS  63 

and  undying  loves,  and  the  sweethearts  who 
despised  mortal  conditions  in  a  fine  credulity, 
and  they  can  only  show  us  a  few  songs  in  a 
bygone  taste,  a  few  actions  worth  remember- 
ing, and  a  few  children  who  have  retained  some 
happy  stamp  from  the  disposition  of  their  par- 
ents." Such  are  at  once  the  best  survivals  and 
the  most  intangible.  -  ^-  ^  c  v  ^  :.-,^  .-v  >'  -- '  - 
Whether  or  not  it  is  possible  to  reconcile  the 
French  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  ideal  of  woman 
and  marriage,  is  a  question  to  which  no  answer 
is  easy.  One  may  hazard  the  guess  that  in  such 
matters  the  cases  on  both  sides  which  most 
nearly  approach  the  ideal  are  not  far  apart, 
though  they  may  have  started  from  the  oppo- 
site extremes.  It  is  not  fair  to  brand  with  the 
name  of  a  nation  or  a  school  such  neuroticism 
as  Hardy's,  or  to  exalt  a  genius  like  George 
Eliot's  as  the  representative  of  another  type 
or  phase.  Truth  lies  in  the  middle  as  of  old. 
Yet  it  is  fair  to  insist  that  a  society  composed 
of  weak  sisters  like  those  whom  Hardy  pic- 
tures is  impossible  and  ephemeral.    It  has  none 


64        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

of  the  elements  whicH  make  for  stability  or 
permanence. 

The  contrast  becomes  even  more  clear  when 
we  turn  from  the  situation  presented  by  the 
outcasts  of  the  social  order  to  the  problems  of 
the  woman's  development  as  it  occurs  under 
normal  conditions,  which  George  Eliot  faces 
and  analyzes.  The  comparison  of  these  prob- 
lems, as  they  appeared  a  generation  ago,  with 
those  which  our  contemporaries  are  trying  to 
meet  in  feministic  and  other  agitation,  is  illum- 
inating in  the  highest  degree.  Her  solution  is 
as  noteworthy  in  its  differences  from  the  "ad- 
vanced" thought  of  the  present  day  as  in  its 
correspondences.  In  many  ways  it  is  wiser  and 
more  helpful  than  our  own,  for  it  assumes  as 
the  fundamentals  of  a  woman's  heart  and  life 
the  hopes  and  desires  of  which  too  frequently 
modern  social  movements,  both  of  reform  and 
of  education,  seek  to  divest  her. 

It  is  only  by  such  a  study  of  the  normal 
woman  in  her  daily  life  that  we  can  hope  to 
understand  the  falsity  of  such  an  attitude  as 
Hardy's  to  the  outcast  woman.    Such  under- 


WEAK   SISTERS  65 

standing  does  not  produce  less  of  pity  or  of 
sympathy,  but  acknowledges  the  need  of  safe- 
guarding marriage  from  any  sentimentalism 
which  may  stand  in  the  way  of  preserving  its 
integrity.  Under  any  civilization  there  will  al- 
ways be  weak  sisters ;  but  the  tendency  may  be 
made  such  as  to  lessen  the  remission  of  the  in- 
stinctive penalties  and  barriers  with  which 
women  have  sought  from  time  immemorial  to 
conserve  and  augment  their  power.  Especially 
in  a  time  like  the  present,  when  necessities  of 
all  sorts  have  been  brought  into  line  to  change 
and  subvert  the  traditional  standards;  when 
new  ideals  of  personal  liberty  and  individual 
self-realization  have  been  developed  to  attack 
convention  and  custom;  when  economic  pres- 
sure has  been  acknowledged  a  sovereign  reason 
for  the  abandonment  of  the  practices  of  estab- 
lished worth, — it  must  never  be  forgotten  that 
weakness  for  a  woman  is  a  sin,  and  one  whose 
gravity  we  are  only  beginning  to  estimate. 


s 


o 


IV 
"HER  INFINITE  VARIETY" 

Strength  and  honor  are  her  clothing;  and 
she  shall  rejoice  in  time  to  come. 

She  openeth  her  mouth  with  wisdom,  and  in 
her  tongue  is  the  law  of  kindness. 

[Proverbs.] 

PERHAPS  no  single  passage  in  all  lit- 
erature offers  a  better  description  of  the 
influence  and  aims  which  until  recently  have 
been  associated  with  good  women  than  does 
that  from  which  these  sentences  are  quoted. 
It  is  only  within  late  years  that  any  funda- 
mental additions  have  been  made  to  the  list  of 
virtues  herein  catalogued,  and  it  is  a  question 
whether  these  are  altogether  improvements. 

To  define  or  portray  the  aspirations  and  in- 
tentions of  a  good  woman  is  not  an  easy  task, 
and  in  the  changing  conceptions  of  the  duties 
and  privileges  of  normal  women  it  is  a  rare  dis- 

66 


"her  infinite  variety"  67 

tinction  to  stand  in  line  with  the  soundest  ten- 
dencies of  the  radicals  and  at  the  same  time 
hold  fast  to  that  which  has  proved  its  value 
in  the  traditional  view.  George  Eliot  has 
achieved  this,  in  the  manner  in  which  such  an 
accomplishment  most  fittingly  comes— »-without 
the  parade  of  iconoclasm  or  the  smug  self-com- 
placency of  reaction.  It  is  in  her  analysis  of 
home-loving  women  that  she  has  most  thor- 
oughly shown  her  right  to  be  reckoned  among 
the  great  interpreters  of  himian  nature^^^ 

The  outstanding  characteristic  of  George 
Eliot's  women  is  the  sanity  and  poise  with 
which  they  meet  the  various  crises  which  con- 
front them.  They  are  rarely  hysterical,  as  are 
the  creatures  of  Thomas  Hardy's  imagination, 
though  at  times  they  may  display  weakness  or 
uncertainty.  Even  in  a  case  like  that  of  Gwen- 
dolen Grandcourt,  where  the  futile  groping 
after  righteousness  of  an  uninstructed  woman 
forms  the  theme  of  one  of  the  most  pitiful  and 
sordid  stories  in  the  whole  series  of  novels,  the 
elements  of  rational  action  are  always  present. 
As  has  been  shown,  there  are  no  "weaker  sis- 


68        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HABDY 

ters"  in  George  Eliot's  novels;  there  are  no 
women  whose  lives  are  independent  of  individ- 
ual choice  and  freedom  of  will.  This  means 
that  there  are  no  ignorant  women,  in  the  full- 
est connotation  of  the  term. 

For  the  inability  to  make  a  rational  choice 
in  the  fundamental  human  relationships  is  the^»7? 
mark  of  genuine  ignorance.  All  Thomas 
Hardy's  women  are  therefore  in  the  ignorant 
class.  There  are  none  such  in  the  novels  of 
George  Eliot.  Misguided  or  uninstructed 
these  women  often  are,  yet  their  instinct  is  to- 
ward the  intelligent  course.  Significantly 
enough,  this  groping  instinct  leads  them  inevit- 
ably toward  some  form  of  higher  education. 
There  are,  to  be  sure,  plenty  of  men  who  can 
say,  with  Mr.  TuUiver,  "An  over-'cute  wom- 
an's no  better  nor  a  long-tailed  sheep — she'll 
fetch  none  the  better  price  for  all  that," — but 
the  woman  herself  realizes  that  in  education 
alone  lies  her  great  hope.  And  so  she  struggles 
toward  it  as  best  she  may  in^he  particular  cir- 
cumstances of  her  own  life;^  Dorothea  Brooke, 
in  her  marriage  to  Mr.  Casaubon,  turned  the 


"her  infinite  variety"  69 

whole  force  of  her  young  idealism  into  the 
pathetic  attempt  to  make  herself  a  companion 
to  the  academic  interests  of  her  future  hus- 
band. To  this  end  she  strove  to  master  dead 
languages;  to  utilize  every  opportunity  of  her 
wedding  journey  to  familiarize  herself  with 
the  history  and  art  which  she  supposed  to  form 
the  background  in  his  mind.  The  tragedy  of 
her  marriage  lay  in  the  fact  that  these  could  not 
penetrate  the  shell  of  pedantry  and  formal- 
ism which  encompassed  her  husband^  Gwen- 
dolen Grandcourt,  knowing  as  she  did  the  fal- 
sity of  the  motives  which  led  to  her  marriage, 
and  aware  of  the  wrongdoing  which  had  pre- 
ceded it,  yet  tried  to  give  life  to  a  dry  branch 
by  study  and  at  least  a  rudimentary  attempt 
at  self-culture.  With  Esther  Lyon,  her  love 
for  Felix  Holt  began  with  a  clash  of  wills  over 
intellectual  concerns. 

With  one  exception,  the  most  interesting 
case  of  this  striving  after  spiritual  companion- 
ship is  that  of  Maggie  Tulliver.  Her  attempt 
from  earliest  childhood  to  enter  into  the  various 
interests  of  her  brother  is  the  instinctive  answer 


70        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

of  the  enlightened  woman  heart  to  the  separa- 
tive education  which  tradition  has  given  to 
men  and  women.  Stevenson's  comment:  *'The 
little  rift  between  the  sexes  is  immeasurably 
widened  by  simply  teaching  one  set  of  catch- 
words to  the  girls  and  another  to  the  boys," 
holds  as  true  now  as  ever,  in  spite  of  the  multi- 
ple endeavors  of  society  to  bring  about  the 
equality  of  the  sexes.  ?George  Eliot  under- 
stood intellectual  companionship  in  fullest 
measure ;  and  that  it  could  exist  without  sacri- 
fice of  the  "feminine"  qualities  she  sought  to 
prove,  both  in  her  novels  and  in  her  life  itself. 
Her  marriage  to  George  Henry  Lewes  offers 
an  illustration  paralleled  in  literary  history 
only  by  the  other  great  idyll  of  the  Brown- 
ings— both  conspicuous  justifications  of  the  be- 
lief that  the  education  of  women  should  enrich 
rather  than  endanger  the  marriage  relation, 
by  making  friendship  possible  within  it. 
^  This  is  the  modern  attitude  toward  woman- 
hood and  its  potentialities,  which  has  only  of 
recent  years  approached  fulfilment.    The  time 


"her  infinite  variety"  71 

is  not  so  far  distant  when  people  could  say,  as 
did  Montaigne  in  his  Essay  on  Friendship: 

As  concerning  marriage,  beside  that  it  is  a 
covenant,  the  entrance  into  which  only  is  free, 
but  the  continuance  in  it  forced  and  compul- 
sory, having  another  dependence  than  that  of 
our  own  free-will,  and  a  bargain  commonly 
contracted  to  other  ends,  there  almost  always 
happens  a  thousand  intricacies  in  it  to  unravel, 
enough  to  break  the  thread  and  to  divert  the 
current  of  a  lively  affection;  whereas  friend- 
ship has  no  manner  of  business  or  traffic  with 
aught  but  itself.  Moreover,  to  say  truth,  the 
ordinary  talent  of  women  is  not  such  as  is  suffi- 
cient to  maintain  the  conference  and  communi- 
cation required  to  the  support  of  this  constancy 
of  mind  to  sustain  the  pinch  of  so  hard  and 
durable  a  knot.  And  doubtless,  if  without  this 
there  might  be  such  a  free  and  voluntary  famil- 
iarity contracted  where  not  only  the  souls 
might  have  this  entire  fruition,  but  the  bodies 
also  might  share  in  the  alliance,  and  a  man  be 
engaged  throughout,  the  friendship  would  cer- 
tainly be  more  full  and  perfect;  but  it  is  with- 
out example  that  this  sex  has  ever  yet  arrived 
at  such  perfection ;  and  by  the  common  consent 
of  the  ancient  schools,  it  is  wholly  rejected 
from  it. 


72         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HABDY 

I  The  contribution  of  the  woman  movement 
of  the  present  to  the  social  advances  of  the  last 
half-century  has  been  essentially  this — of  rec- 
ognizing in  the  intercourse  between  the  sexes 
the  possibility  of  relations  heretofore  supposed 
to  exist  within  one  sex  alone.  / 
I  rTJnderlying  all  George  Eliot's  portraits  of 
women  there  is  a  conception  of  womanhood 
which  she  foreshadows  most  definitely  in  the 
prelude  to  Middlemarch,  Perhaps  it  is  an 
exaggeration  of  the  facts  to  regard  St.  Ther- 
esa as  the  prototype  of  woman's  life ;  but  never- 
theless, there  is  no  little  truth  in  the  conception : 

Many  Theresas  have  been  born  who  found 
for  themselves  no  epic  life  wherein  there  was 
a  constant  unfolding  of  far-resonant  action, 
perhaps  only  a  life  of  mistakes,  the  offspring 
of  a  certain  spiritual  grandeur  ill-matched  with 
the  measures  of  opportunity,  perhaps  a  tragic 
failure  which  found  no  sacred  poet  and  sank 
unwept  into  oblivion.  With  dim  lights  and 
tangled  circumstance  they  tried  to  shape  their 
thought  and  deed  in  noble  agreement ;  but  after 
all,  to  common  eyes  their  struggles  around 
were  inconsistency  and  formlessness,  for  these 


"her  infinite  variety"  73 

later-born  Theresas  were  helped  by  no  coher- 
ent social  faith  and  order  which  could  perform 
the  function  of  knowledge  for  the  ardently- 
willing  soul.  Their  ardor  alternated  between 
a  vague  ideal  and  the  common  yearning  of 
womanhood;  so  that  the  one  was  disapproved 
as  extravagance,  and  the  other  condemned  as  a 
lapse.| 

fThe  medium  through  which  this  ideal  of 
service  is  to  be  attained  is  always  that  of  a 
worthy  and  beautiful  love.  /  "A  supreme  love," 
she  says  in  Felix  Holt,  "a  supreme  love,  a 
motive  that  gives  a  sublime  rhythm  to  a  wom- 
an's life,  and  exalts  habit  into  partnership 
with  the  soul's  highest  needs,  is  not  to  be  had 
where  and  how  she  wills;  to  know  that  high 
initiation  she  must  tread  where  it  is  hard  to 
tread,  and  feel  the  chill  air  and  watch  through 
darkness.  It  is  not  true  that  love  makes  all 
things  easy;  it  makes  us  choose  what  is  diffi- 
cult." In  Romola  there  are  sentences  which 
show  the  other  side  of  the  shield:  "There  is 
no  compensation  for  the  woman  who  feels  that 
the  chief  relation  of  her  life  has  been  no  more 


74}        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

than  a  mistake.  She  has  lost  her  crown.  The 
deepest  secret  of  human  blessedness  has  half 
whispered  itself  to  her,  and  then  forever  passed 
her  by." 

The  greatest  example  of  fully  rounded  wom- 
anhood in  all  George  Eliot's  novels  is  this  com- 
manding figure  of  Romola,  a  woman  who  is  the 
masterpiece  of  ancient  saying.  The  fact  that 
she  is  placed  in  an  historical  setting  does  not  in 
the  least  detract  from  her  importance  as  an 
idealized  portrait.  For  the  freedom  offered 
by  the  humanism  of  the  Renaissance,  with  its 
breadth  of  intellectual  outlook,  and  limitless 
philosophical  horizon,  represents  spiritual  and 
mental  possibilities  which  we  have  never  sur- 
passed and  but  seldom  reached  in  the  centuries 
which  have  succeeded.  Romola  herself  was  the 
inlieritor  of  all  this  wealth  of  learning  and  en- 
lightenment. She  came  to  the  problems  of  her 
marriage  with  a  mind  finely  tempered  by  the 
discipline  and  understanding  acquired  by  a 
long  and  toilsome  self-cultivation.  Her  mind 
had  been  fully  opened  b/  contact  with  the 
greatest  idealisms  of  centuries.     It  is  little 


"her  infinite  variety"  75 

\  wonder  that  such  a  woman  can  fittingly  stand 
as  protagonist  for  her  sex. 

And  so  she  does.  The  ideal  woman  in 
George  Eliot  is  of  the  Romola-type.  This  Is 
the  norm  toward  which  all  her  women  are  turn- 
ing. Dinah  Morris  is  of  this  sort,  mutatis 
mutandis;  Maggie  Tulliver  works  toward  it  by 
painful  endeavor;  Dorothea  Brooke,  in  the 
eagerness  ^f  her  yotllE,  seeks  to  achieve  this 
meal.'  Even  such  helpless  and  hopeless  crea- 
tures as  Gwendolen  Grandcourt  and  Hetty 
Sorrel  have  their  vision  of  an  ideal  existence 
less  sordid  and  materialistic  than  that  with 
which  they  are  familiar.  It  is  an  ideal  prefig- 
uring of  a  character  of  which  it  may  be  said,  as 
she  does,  "It  belongs  to  every  large  nature, 
when  it  is  not  under  the  immediate  power  of 
some  strong,  unquestioning  emotion,  to  suspect 
itself,  and  doubt  the  truth  of  its  own  impres- 
sions, conscious  of  possibilities  beyond  its  own 
horizon."  But  it  is  not  content  with  this  self- 
questioning ;  it  takes  refuge  in  action,  in  affec- 
tion, and  in  self-sacrifice.  Its  affections  are 
of  the  sort  epitomized  in  a  sentence  like  this: 


76        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

"Love  does  not  aim  simply  at  the  conscious 
good  of  the  beloved  object;  it  is  not  satisfied 
without  perfect  loyalty  of  heart ;  it  aims  at  its 
own  completeness."  It  feels  that  it  is  "good 
to  be  inspired  by  more  than  pity — by  the  be- 
lief in  a  heroism  struggling  for  sublime  ends, 
towards  which  the  daily  action  of  pity  would 
only  tend  feebly  as  the  dews  that  freshen  the 
weedy  ground  to-day  tend  to  prepare  an  un- 
seen harvest  in  the  years  to  come."  In  the 
more  purely  intellectual  field  such  a  character 
holds  its  ideas  in  close  relation  to  its  feelings, 
but  never  lets  the  latter  gain  undue  promi- 
nence. "As  a  strong  body  struggles  against 
fumes  with  the  more  violence  when  they  begin 
to  be  stifling,  a  strong  soul  struggles  against 
phantasies  with  all  the  more  alarmed  energy 
when  they  threaten  to  govern  in  the  place  of 
thought."  Yet  in  spite  of  all  this,  "After  all 
has  been  said  that  can  be  said  about  the  wi- 
dening influence  of  ideas,  its  remains  true  that 
they  would  hardly  be  such  strong  agents  unless 
they  were  taken  in  a  solvent  of  feeling.  The 
great  world-struggle  of  developing  thought 


"her  infinite  variety"  77 

is  continually  foreshadowed  in  the  struggle  of 
the  affections,  seeking  a  justification  for  love 
and  hope." 

This  ideal  is  the  ideal  of  all  right-thinking 
women,  even  after  a  generation  of  unrest  and 
social  striving  unparalleled  in  the  history  of 
woman's  evolution.  We  have  gone  no  further 
in  the  search  for  self-realization  than  George 
Eliot  conceived  and  pictured  in  Romola.  She 
has  shown  not  only  the  resources  created  by 
intellectual  interests,  but  the  power  for  social 
service  and  humanitarian  endeavor  generated 
by  supreme  ethical  groping.  The  religious 
motive  which  underlies  all  our  life  is  part  of  the 
twisted  fabric  which  she  develops.  To  such 
a  nature  sori-ow  comes  as  part  of  the  fulfilment 
of  the  law  of  being,  not  to  be  evaded  or  feared, 
but  rather  to  be  welcomed  and  understood. 
Faith  comes  to  such,  divested  of  its  parasitic 
outgrowths,  as  the  simple  and  sincere  depend- 
ence of  the  soul  in  that  which  lies  outside  its 
ken — "the  assurance  of  things  hoped  for,  the 
evidence  of  things  not  seen." 

There  are  a  number  of  intimate  glimpses 


78         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

which  show  the  bent  and  direction  of  Romola's 
character.  One  such  is  Tito's  comparison  be- 
tween Tessa  and  Romola: 

He  had  felt  an  unconquerable  shrinking 
from  an  immediate  encounter  with  Romola. 
She,  too,  knew  little  of  the  actual  world;  she, 
too,  trusted  him;  but  he  had  an  uneasy  con- 
sciousness that  behind  her  frank  eyes  there  was 
a  nature  that  would  judge  him,  and  that  any 
ill-founded  trust  of  hers  sprang  not  from 
petty,  brute-like  incapacity,  but  from  a  noble- 
ness which  might  prove  an  alarming  touch- 
stone. 

More  direct  are  the  passages  in  which  Ro- 
mola's affection,  and  its  disillusionment,  are 
suggested  and  analyzed: 

At  certain  moments — and  this  was  one  of 
them — Romola  was  carried,  by  a  sudden  wave 
of  memory,  back  again  into  the  time  of  perfect 
trust,  and  felt  again  the  presence  of  the  hus- 
band whose  love  made  the  world  as  fresh  and 
wonderful  to  her  as  to  a  little  child  that  sits  in 
stillness  among  the  sunny  flowers:  heard  the 
gentle  tones  and  saw  the  soft  eyes  without  any 
lie  in  them,  and  breathed  again  that  large  free- 


"her  infinite  variety"  79 

dom  of  the  soul  which  comes  from  the  faith  that 
the  being  who  is  nearest  to  us  is  greater  than 
ourselves.  And  in  those  brief  moments  the 
tears  always  rose:  the  woman's  lovingness  felt 
something  akin  to  what  the  bereaved  mother 
feels  when  the  tiny  fingers  seem  to  lie  warm  on 
her  bosom,  and  yet  are  marble  to  her  touch  as 
she  bends  over  the  silent  bed. 

From  the  account  of  her  interrupted  flight 
from  Florence  comes  an  illuminating  pas- 
sage: 

It  brought  a  vague  but  arresting  sense  that 
she  was  somehow  violently  rending  her  life  in 
two:  a  presentiment  that  the  strong  impulse 
which  had  seemed  to  exclude  doubt  and  make 
her  path  clear  might  after  all  be  blindness,  and 
that  there  was  something  in  human  bonds 
which  must  prevent  them  from  being  broken 
with  the  breaking  of  illusions.  That  tender- 
ness and  keen  fellow-feeling  for  the  near  and 
the  loved  which  are  the  main  outgrowths  of  the 
affections,  had  made  the  religion  of  her  life: 
they  had  made  her.  patient  in  spite  of  natural 
impetuosity;  they  would  have  sufficed  to  make 
her  heroic.  .  .  .  She  had  endured  and  forborne 
because  she  loved;  maxims  which  told  her  to 
feel  less,  and  not  to  cling  close  lest  the  outward 


80        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

course  of  great  nature  should  jar  her,  had  been 
as  powerless  on  her  tenderness  as  they  had  been 
on  her  father's  yearning  for  just  fame.  She 
had  appropriated  no  theories;  she  had  simply 
felt  strong  in  the  strength  of  affection,  and  life 
without  that  energy  came  to  her  as  an  entirely 
new  problem.  ...  So  far  as  she  conceived  her 
solitary,  loveless  life  at  all,  she  saw  it  animated 
by  a  proud,  stoical  heroism,  and  by  an  indis- 
tinct but  strong  purpose  of  labor,  that  she 
might  be  wise  enough  to  write  something  which 
would  rescue  her  father's  name  from  oblivion. 
After  all,  she  was  only  a  young  girl — this  poor 
Romola,  who  had  found  herself  at  the  end  of 
her  joys. 

There  are  some  people  who  are  afraid  of 
such  a  type  of  womanhood  as  this  foreshadows. 
They  distrust  it  from  one  of  two  points  of 
view,  both  expressions  of  extreme  attitudes — 
that  which  regards  it  as  "too  radical,"  and 
that  which  declares  it  to  be  "too  conservative." 
The  reactionaries  attack  it  because  as  it  seems 
to  them,  it  tends  toward  the  unsexing  of 
women.  A  woman  w^hose  brain  is  equal  or  su- 
perior to  that  of  the  men  with  whom  she  is 
brought  into  contact,  is  never  a  pleasant  com- 


"her  infinite  variety"  81 

panion  for  them.    Superiority  which  they  are 
willing   to   acknowledge   and   take   pride   in, 
where  its  possessor  is  a  man,  seems  to  them  pre- 
sumption and  arrogance  in  a  woman.    Often, 
of  course,  they  are  absolutely  right.    The  first 
effect  of  enlightenment,  especially  in  its  in- 
complete.  phases,  is  frequently  an  unpleasant 
one,  but  this  is  by  no  means  a  necessary  con- 
comitant of  the  higher  education.    The  tradi- 
tional conception  of  womanhood,  by  defining 
the  sphere  in  which  a  woman's  talents  were  to 
be  exercised,  left  her  no  opportunity  to  com- 
pete with  men — Whence  no  opportunity  to  im- 
pose any  check  on  them  even  in  the  matters 
which  affected  her  own  life.    She  was  necessar- 
ily much  more  docile,  easy  to  manage,  and  con- 
tented.   The  conservative  sees  all  this  vanish- 
ing and  he  fears  its  effect.    He  does  not  wish 
to  see  his  own  supremacy  challenged  in  his 
household.    What  he  does  not  realize  is  that 
the  giving  of  wider  opportunities  to  women  is 
really  nothing  more  than  forcing  wider  oppor- 
tunities on  men.    The  truly  radical  method  of 
procedure  is  that  which  is  actually  in  progress 


82         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

- — the  widening  of  the  man's  sphere  to  main- 
tain his  superiority  over  the  woman  with  her 
broadening  horizon. 

From  the  radical  point  of  view  the  difficulty 
with  an  ideal  womanhood  like  George  Eliot's 
is,  though  he  would  hardly  enjoy  the  phrase, 
that  it  recognizes  too  fully  the  interdependence 
of  the  sexes.  Even  in  her  wildest  moments, 
George  Eliot  does  not  conceive  a  world  where 
men  and  women  work  out  their  destinies  in  a 
kind  of  persistent  sex-antagonism.  The  his- 
tory of  the  one  woman  in  whom  she  shows  this 
revolt  is  typical  and  significant.  The  princess 
Halm-Eberstein,  Daniel  Deronda's  mother, 
is  a  forerunner  of  the  now  famous  type  of 
Magda,  the  heroine  of  Sudermann's  play.  She 
is  a  woman  whose  revolt  is  only  partial  and  in- 
complete— rendered  so  not  by  her  lack  of  abil- 
ity, but  by  her  own  convictions,  slow  in  ma- 
turing, but  irresistible  in  their  driving  power. 
Her  anxiety  to  secure  for  her  son  complete 
independence  of  his  race  and  its  traditions  can- 
not prevent  her  passing  on  to  him  the  inheri- 
tance of  his  grandfather's  devotion.    She  her- 


C( 


HER   INFINITE   VARIETY"  83 


self,  though  in  her  period  of  rebellion  she  was 
able  to  cut  herself  off  from  the  knowledge  of 
her  child,  was  not  able  so  to  conquer  the  recur- 
rence of  her  normal  wishes  as  to  hold  fast  to 
her  plan.  Moreover,  when  she  had  to  face  the 
loss  of  her  career  as  a  singer,  she  could  not 
face  it  alone,  but  sought  her  refuge  in  those 
things  which  are  the  common  lot  of  all  women. 
To  the  radical  all  this  is  incomprehensible.  He 
cannot  realize  that  equality  of  the  sexes  is  quite 
possible  without  similarity  of  function.  In- 
stead he  demands  for  women, — for  those  who 
are  unwilling  as  well  as  for  those  who  are  not, 
— "equal  rights — give  women  the  ballot;  give 
them  the  right  to  make  laws ;  give  them  equal 
recognition  in  industry."  What  he  never  adds 
as  a  corollary  is  the  simplest  step  in  the  doc- 
trine of  equality, — "Give  them  equal  liabilities 
with  men."  The  radical  must  learn  that  equal- 
ity is  something  more  fundamental  then  simi- 
larity of  function. 

An  interesting  and  apposite  discussion  of  the 
relation  between  the  higher  education  as  ap- 
plied to  men  and  to  women  is  to  be  found  in 


84         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

Professor  Hugo  Mlinsterberg's  chapter  on 
*'Women"  in  the  volume  entitled  American 
Traits.  After  an  exposition  of  the  deficien- 
cies of  excessive  feminization  of  education  and 
culture,  such  as  we  see  at  the  present  time,  he 
continues  after  this  wise : 


"And  this  condition,  in  which  the  professional 
callings,  the  whole  influence  on  the  develop- 
ment of  the  younger  generation,  all  art  and 
science  and  morality  and  religion,  come  to  be 
moulded  and  stamped  by  women,  is  precisely 
the  one  which  some  call  equality  of  the  sexes! 
The  truth  is  evident  here  as  everywhere,  that 
equality  cannot  be  brought  about  artificially. 
To  force  equality  always  means  merely  shift- 
ing the  inequality  from  one  region  to  another; 
and  if  the  primary  inequality  was  the  natural 
one,  the  artificial  substitute  must  be  danger- 
ous if  it  be  more  than  a  temporary  condition. 
Nature  cannot  act  otherwise,  because  nature 
cannot  tolerate  real  equality.  Equality  means 
in  the  household  of  nature  a  wasted  repetition 
of  function;  equality,  therefore,  represents 
everywhere  the  lower  stage  of  the  development, 
and  has  to  go  over  into  differentiation  of  func- 
tion. Nature  cannot  be  dodged,  and  the 
growth  of  nations  cannot  escape  natural  laws. 


"her  infinite  variety"  85 

To  say  that  man  and  woman  must  be  equal  de- 
mands a  natural  correction  by  bringing  in  the 
differentiation  of  function  at  some  other  point : 
you  may  decree  equality  to-day,  but  nature 
takes  care  that  we  shall  have,  in  consequence, 
a  new  kind  of  inequality  to-morrow."  The  con- 
clusion is  characteristic:  "Only  one  practical 
change  must  come  in  response  to  the  urgent 
needs  of  our  period:  the  American  man  must 
raise  his  level  of  general  culture.  In  short, 
the  woman's  question  is,  in  this  country,  as  ul- 
timately perhaps  everywhere,  the  man's  ques- 
tion. Reform  the  man,  and  all  difficulties  dis- 
appear." 

(  Toward  this  fundamental  relationship  be- 
tween the  sexes  George  Eliot's  whole  concep- 
tion of  the  woman  question  is  directed.  She 
realizes,  more  than  do  most  of  those  who  decry 
her  attitude,  the  basic  laws  of  development 
which  govern  women's  lives.  She  knows  that 
economic  independence,  political  rights,  and 
social  liberties  are  only  shibboleths  to  conceal 
the  need  for  other  and  more  long  standing  du- 
ties. With  the  problem  of  the  surplus  woman 
she  does  not  deal;  but  in  her  consistent  recog- 


86        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAEDY 

nition  of  the  relation  of  the  woman  to  her 
home  and  her  children  she  shows  conclusively 
that  that,  in  her  mind,  was  the  great  field  of 
advance.       1 

In  view  or  this  general  alignment  of  woman- 
kind in  its  relations  to  society,  one  invariably 
reaches  the  question  of  what  constitutes  an 
ideal  woman's  life.  This  is,  in  effect,  the  ques- 
tion of  what  constitutes  an  ideal  marriage. 
Necessarily,  the  answer  varies  with  the  needs 
of  the  individual.  We  say  of  marriage  that  it 
is  a  lottery,  depending  for  its  vitality  upon 
personal  qualities  in  the  contracting  parties. 
It  was  George  Eliot  who  laid  down  the  maxim 
that  ^'Marriage  must  be  a  relation  either  of 
sympathy  or  conquest.^/  How  she  regarded 
the  opportunities  for  the  development  of  sym- 
pathies we  have  seen  in  the  case  of  Romola, 
considered  as  an  ideal  toward  which  our  striv- 
ing tends.  At  the  same  time  she  had  no  il- 
lusions as  to  the  nature  of  womankind.  It 
was  into  the  mouth  of  Mrs.  Poyser,  sensible, 
worthy  woman,  that  she  put  that  delightful  ep- 
igram:   "I'm  not  denyin'  the  women  are  fool- 


"her  infinite  variety"  87 

ish;  God  Almighty  made  'em  to  match  the 
men."  Where  inequahty  between  the  sexes 
occurs  in  her  novels,  it  is  due  to  lack  of  op- 
portunity for  the  woman,  not  to  any  other 
cause. 

One  other  determining  factor  George  Eliot 
recognizes  in  studying  women,  of  which  some 
mention  has  already  been  made.  She  com- 
ments, with  singular  penetration  and  discern- 
ment, that  "A  woman's  lot  is  made  for  her  by 
the  loveshe'  accepts."  This  Sxes  the  respon- 
sibility for  domestic  situations  equally  on  the 
shoulders  of  all  who  should  bear  it,  for  there 
is  no  woman  so  blind  that  she  cannot  discrimi- 
nate between  higher  and  lower  forms  of  love. 
The  sentimental  school-girl's  idea  of  love  may 
be  no  nearer  the  truth  than  that  of  the  woman 
of  pleasure;  yet  her  sentiment  may  serve  as  a 
makeshift  touchstone  whereby  to  approach  her 
most  vital  decisions.  And  even  the  rawest  girl, 
contemplating  the  possibility  of  marriage,  has 
some  knowledge,  often  inaccurate  and  dis- 
torted, but  yet  in  a  measure  reliable,  of  the 
duties  and  subjections  which  it  imposes,  suf- 


88        GEOEGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

ficient  to  give  her  pause  before  she  commits 
herself  irrevocably.  This  is  what  makes  such 
a  situation  as  that  of  Sue  Bridehead,  with  her 
continual  plaint,  "I  had  no  idea  that  that  was 
involved"  such  an  impossible  characterization. 
Virginity  of  spirit  there  is,  and  it  is  a  very 
beautiful  thing;  but  its  manifestations  are  not 
those  of  an  unreal  ignorance  or  unreflecting  ca- 
price. 

If  the  newer  opportunities  for  women  have 
done  an5i:hing,  it  has  been  this — to  make  possi- 
ble the  acceptance  only  of  such  love  as  the  in- 
dividual woman  feels  to  be  her  greatest  need. 
It  is  here  more  than  anywhere  else  that  the  re- 
laxing of  conditions  has  been  most  helpful, 
making  it  possible  for  the  woman  to  go  forth 
and  conquer  destiny,  demanding  of  it  the  kind 
of  marriage  most  worthy  of  her,  or,  if  need  be, 
to  refuse  to  accept  the  ignoble  alternative.  By 
so  doing  she  has  been  able  to  maintain  the  value 
she  chose  to  put  upon  herself. 

There  is  one  other  w^ord  which  should  be 
added  to  this — r  man's  reflection  upon  the 
place  of  a  woman  in  his  or  any  other's  life.    "I 


"her  infinite  variety"  89 

wonder,"  says  Felix  Holt,  "whether  the  sub- 
tle measuring  of  forces  will  ever  come  to  meas- 
uring the  force  there  would  be  in  one  beautiful 
woman  whose  mind  was  as  noble  as  her  face 
was  beautiful — ^who  made  a  man's  passion  for 
her  rush  in  one  current  with  all  the  great  aims 
of  his  life."  Such  womanhood  it  is  the  hope 
of  our  day  to  develop,  by  education,  by  liberty, 
by  responsibility ;  and  our  aims  will  be  fulfilled 
by  some  such  blending  and  incorporation  of  old 
ideals  with  new  as  George  Eliot  foresaw. 

Movements  develop  and  pass;  and  yet,  on 
the  whole,  things  are  not  greatly  changed. 
The  broad  outlines  remain  the  same.  There 
is  not,  in  any  proper  sense,  a  "woman  prob- 
lem" ;  but  there  are  the  problems  of  multitudes 
of  individual  women.  It  is  impossible  to  legis- 
late for  all  of  them,  for  it  is  still  true  of  woman 
that 

Age  cannot  wither  her,  nor  custom  stale 
Her  infinite  variety. 

The  only  way  in  which  any  comprehension  of 
the  practical  solution  of  the  questions  raised 


90         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

by  the  million  and  more  cases  which  come  be- 
fore the  investigator  can  be  attained  is  by  fol- 
lowing somewhat  the  plan  outlined,  of  unre- 
stricted education,  coupled  with  the  normal 
human  and  womanly  responsibilities.  It  is  no 
question  of  sex  warfare  or  of  unsexing;  it  is 
merely  a  recognition  of  the  principle,  voiced 
by  many  others  as  well  as  by  George  Eliot : 

A  woman's  rank 

Lies  in  the  fulness  of  her  womanliood — 

Therein  alone  she  is  royal. 

This  royalty  of  spirit  can  only  come  through 
the  recognition  of  her  woman's  difference,  her 
woman's  need,  and  her  woman's  duty. 


MEN  OF  STRAW 

THERE  is  nothing  rarer  in  literary  history 
than  for  a  man  to  portray  characters  of 
both  sexes  with  equal  success.  In  the  drama 
it  is  easier  than  in  othei  literary  forms ;  but  this 
is  perhaps  because  the  drama,  per  se„  is  only  a 
quasi-literary  genre,  depending  for  its  success 
on  the  wholly  incalculable  element  of  the  ac- 
tor's personality,  which  may  supplement  the 
author's  invention  and  conceal  his  ineptitudes 
to  unlimited  extent.  The  great  novelists 
have  been  far  from  successful  in  this  respect. 
Richardson,  with  a  singularly  feminine  percep- 
tion, is  able  to  trace  the  emotions  and  perplexi- 
ties in  the  soul  of  Clarissa  Harlowe;  but  he 
cannot  make  of  Lovelace  a  villain  of  flesh  and 
blood,  any  more  than  Shakespeare  could  cre- 
ate such  a  being  as  we  might  ever  fear  to  meet 

91 


92        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

in  lago,  or  Goethe  such  an  one  in  Mephis- 
topheles.  Fielding  draws  no  women  in  whose 
verisimilitude  we  can  believe,  with  the  possible, 
and  even  then  only  occasional,  exceptions  in  the 
daughters  of  delight  who  stray  into  his  pages. 
The  mutual  antipathy  between  the  two  is  only 
another  instance  of  the  same  thing  in  a  highly 
specialized  form.  Dickens  shows  the  same  in- 
ability to  present  female  character  in  its  com- 
pleteness; and  Thackeray,  for  all  his  excep- 
tional achievement  in  Becky  Sharp,  must  bear 
the  same  criticism. 

In  view  of  all  this,  it  is  small  wonder  that 
neither  George  Eliot  nor  Thomas  Hardy 
should  succeed  especially  notably  in  the  repre- 
sentation of  both  men  and  women.  Of  her 
ambitious  studies  of  men,  as  distinguished  from 
her  vignettes,  George  Eliot  has  only  three  of 
unquestioned  success — Adam  Bede,  Silas  Mar- 
ner,  and  Tito  Melema.  Hardy  has  scarcely 
more.  The  rough,  self -tormenting  Mayor  of 
Casterbridge,  Henchard,  is  one  of  these ;  Dig- 
gory  Venn  the  reddleman  is  another.  These 
are  the  most  conspicuous  examples,  standing 


MEN    OF   STRAW  93 

almost  alone,  for  reasons  which  will  presently 
appear.  What  is  significant  is  the  manner  of 
Hardy's  failure  to  depict  upright,  straight  liv- 
ing men.  It  is  lacking  in  exactly  the  same  de- 
gree that  George  Eliot  is  lacking,  and  for  al- 
most the  same  reasons. 

f 

If  one  may  lay  down  a  maxim  in  such  a  case, 
ignoring  that  other  venerable  fallacy — 

Woman's  at  best  a  contradiction  still, 

it  may  be  said  that  women  are  not  able  to  rep- 
resent the  healthy  animal  vitality,  which  in  its 
lowest  forms  becomes  brutality,  through  an 
artistic  medium.  This  is  due  to  the  same  men- 
tal qualities  which  credit  them  with  the  pre- 
ponderance of  wit  over  humor.  It  follows, 
therefore,  that  characters  in  which  they  seek 
to  represent  the  degenerative  forces,  let  us  say, 
must  be  of  the  subtler  types.  This  explains 
the  extraordinary  insight  which  could  produce 
Tito  Melema.  Such  a  character  as  Tom  Jones 
could  never  come  from  a  woman's  brain.  There 
is  nothing  in  her  understanding  to  correspond 
with  it.    When  these  subtler  forms  of  degener- 


94         GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

ating  or  disintegrating  character  are  brought 
into  the  realm  of  the  physical  passions,  they 
become  studies  of  decadence.  This  is  what 
Hardy  does.  Where  George  Eliot  traces  the 
influence  of  mental  traits  on  actual  conduct, 
Hardy  indicates  the  effect  of  physical  traits  on 
behavior;  and  these  studies  form  the  basis  of 
masculine  character  in  their  respective  novels. 
The  danger  is  that  which  actually  results  in 
several  of  George  Eliot's  novels — the  substitu- 
tion of  a  man  of  straw  for  a  flesh-and-blood 
mortal.  That  this  should  be  the  case  with  her 
is  not  so  surprising  as  that  it  should  be  true  also 
of  Hardy.  Yet  examination  proves  the  truth 
of  the  contention. 

One  of  the  most  conspicuous  failures  is 
George  Eliot's  figure  of  Daniel  Deronda,  a 
creature  "without  form  and  void,"  to  whom 
Stevenson  could  refer  in  this  delightful  fash- 
ion :  "Accepted  lovers  treat  women  to  Grandi- 
sonian  airs  marked  with  a  suspicion  of  fatuity. 
I  am  not  quite  certain  that  women  do  not  like 
this  kind  of  thing ;  but  really,  after  having  be- 
mused myself  over  *Daniel  Deronda,'  I  have 


MEN   OF  STRAW  95 

given  up  trying  to  understand  what  they  like." 
This  is  an  attempt  to  reproduce,  through  the 
medium  of  hterature,  a  man  whose  sympathies 
are  sufficiently  alert,  whose  sensitiveness  is  suf- 
ficiently great,  and  whose  intelligence  is  suf- 
ficiently keen  to  lift  him  above  his  fellows  by 
force  of  character  and  talents. 

George  Eliot's  description  of  her  hero  il- 
lustrates both  her  ideal  and  her  shortcomings: 
"His  face  had  that  disturbing  kind  of  form 
and  expression  which  threatens  to  affect  opin- 
ion— as  if  one's  standard  were  somehow  wrong. 
His  voice,  heard  now  for  the  first  time,  was  to 
Grandcourt's  toneless  drawl,  which  had  been 
in  her  ears  every  day,  as  the  deep  notes  of  a  vio- 
loncello to  the  broken  discourse  of  poultry  and 
other  lazy  gentry  in  the  afternoon  sunshine. 
Grandcourt,  she  inwardly  conjectured,  was 
perhaps  right  in  saying  that  Deronda  thought 
too  much  of  himself: — a  favorite  way  of  ex- 
plaining a  superiority  that  humiliates."  That 
this  is  the  consistent  and  permanent  impres- 
sion, a  later  quotation  will  show.  It  is  taken 
from  the  period  of  Gwendolen's  confession  to 


96        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

Deronda  of  her  hatred  for  her  husband,  and 
her  wish  to  encompass  his  death.  * 'Devoted  as 
these  words  were,  they  widened  his  spiritual 
distance  from  her,  and  she  felt  it  more  difficult 
to  speak:  she  had  a  vague  need  of  getting 
nearer  to  that  compassion  which  seemed  to  be 
regarding  her  from  a  halo  of  superiority,  and 
the  need  turned  into  an  impulse  to  humble  her- 
self more."  Such  a  character,  endowed  with 
the  attributes  of  humanity  as  well  as  with  the 
ideal  virtues,  we  are  familiar  with  in  Henry 
Esmond,  but  nowhere  else  among  the  great 
novels  is  it  to  be  found.  Though  a  woman 
could  conceive  such  a  character,  as  undoubt- 
edly George  Eliot  did,  she  could  not  repro- 
duce it. 

Hardy  comes  to  grief  over  the  same  rock, 
though  he  chooses  a  slightly  different  angle  of 
approach.  There  are  few  studies  of  men  in 
his  work  which  are  free  from  that  hall-mark  of 
decadence,  sexual  perversion.  Of  these,  one 
which  purports  to  be  the  portrait  of  a  pure 
man,  Giles  Winterborne,  in  The  Woodland- 
ers,  is  singularly  lacking  in  reality  or  mascu- 


MEN   OF   STRAW  97 

Unity.  What  should  be  strength  and  self-con- 
trol becomes  pusillanimous  acquiescence  in  the 
situation  as  he  finds  it,  to  the  detriment  of  the 
artistic  likeness.  What  should  be  the  proud 
sense  of  physical  integrity  in  Angel  Clare  and 
Henry  Knight  becomes  unenlightened,  for- 
malistic  insistence  on  a  nebulous  kind  of  un- 
sophistication,  quite  unlike  what  either  of  them 
would  hold  needful  for  himself.  Not  only  are 
the  doctrines  which  they  hold  and  practise  in- 
consistent, but  the  characters  from  which  these 
theories  develop  are  self -contradictory. 

The  strange,  conglomerate  image  called 
Jude  Fawley  is  another  case  in  point.  It 
shows,  more  definitely  than  either  of  the  others, 
the  fallacy  of  Hardy's  method  of  approach. 
In  Jude,  he  has  tried  to  show  the  influence 
of  sex  upon  a  man's  development.  Jude  has 
three  vices,  if  they  may  be  so  grouped — wine, 
women,  and  Christminster.  Physically  he  is  at 
the  mercy  of  the  first;  physically  and  spiritu- 
ally at  the  mercy  of  the  second ;  and  spiritually 
at  the  mercy  of  the  third.  In  a  sense,  indeed, 
the  influence  of  Christminster  upon  Jude  is  a 


98        GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

physical  one — ^much  like  the  "waving  censers 
and  the  anthems  loud"  of  Tennyson's  concep- 
tion. It  is  impossible  to  construct  a  character 
of  depth  and  verisimilitude  upon  this  basis. 
The  wholesome,  open-air  characteristics  which 
exist  everywhere  in  some  measure,  are  utterly 
absent.  Even  Jude's  physical  intemperance  is 
an  anaemic  thing,  not  to  be  compared  to  the 
frankly  sensual  excesses  of  Tom  Jones  or  Rod- 
erick Random.  There  is  cure  for  such  incon- 
tinence as  theirs ;  the  decadence  of  Jude  is  past 
remedy. 

In  fairness  it  must  be  admitted  that  where 
Hardy  undertakes  to.  show  the  effects  of  what 
Stevenson  calls  the  "midsummer  passion"  of 
love,  to  picture  the  lyric  affection  between  a 
man  and  a  maid,  he  succeeds  with  remarkable 
power,  such  as  George  Eliot  nowhere  shows. 
It  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  understand  the  in- 
tense emotion  which  is  not  far  from  adolescent 
throes;  and  Hardy  is  singularly  skilful  in  do- 
ing so.  An  example  in  point  is  taken  from 
Tess:     . 


MEN    OF   STRAW  99 

Every  see-saw  of  her  breath,  every  wave  of 
her  blood,  every  pulse  singing  in  her  ears,  was 
a  voice  that  joined  with  nature  in  revolt 
against  her  scrupulousness.  Reckless,  inconsid- 
erate acceptance  of  him,  to  close  with  him  at 
the  altar,  revealing  nothing  and  chancing  dis- 
covery at  that  first  act  in  her  drama ;  to  snatch 
ripe  pleasure  before  the  iron  teeth  of  pain 
could  have  time  to  shut  upon  her;  that  was 
what  love  ^^unselled ;  and  in  almost  a  terror 
of  ecstasy  Tess  confusedly  divined  that,  despite 
her  many  months  of  lonely  self -chastisement, 
wrestling^^  communings,  schemes  to  lead  a  fu- 
ture of  auat^re  isolationrtove's  counsel  would 
prevail. 


iteri 


But  it  should  nev^^  be  forgotten  that  young 
love  is  not  by  any  means  the  only  love,  and  that 
perpetual  adolescence  is  a  pathological^n- 
dition.  There  is  nothing  in  George  Eliot  to 
correspond  with  this  lyricism  of  Hardy.  Ev^n 
in  the  id^dlic  portions  of  Adam  Bede  a^d 
The  Mill  on  the  Floss  she  fails  to  reach  ^e 
same  height  of  intensity  and  passion;  but  it  is 
more  than  compensated  for  by  the  clearness 
and  steadiness  of  her  more  limited  vision./ 

In  the  representation  of  such  types  as  those 


100      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

attempted  in  Daniel  Deronda  and  Felix  Holt, 
George  Eliot's  blunders  are  perhaps  the  inevi- 
table ones.  In  Deronda  she  conceives,  to  quote 
Stevenson  once  more,  "a  man  who  delights 
women  by  his  feminine  perceptions,''  overlook- 
ing completely  the  other  side  of  the  balance, 
that  he  "will  often  scatter  his  admirers  by  a 
chance  explosion  of  the  under  side  of  man." 
There  is  no  evidence  that  Deronda  ever  be- 
haved with  less  than  Chesterfieldian  propriety. 
Antipathies  he  has  none,  even  to  such  an  ob- 
vious reprobate  as  Mirah's  father,  and  in  that 
instance  the  forbearance  of  a  young  man  for 
the  parent  of  his  beloved  does  not  fully  account 
for  his  extraordinary  patience.  An  episode, 
which,  of  course,  had  no  place  in  the  novel,  re- 
cording the  developments  on  some  trying  oc- 
casion after  the  marriage  of  Deronda,  when 
the  elder  Cohen  undertook  to  re-establish  him- 
self in  his  daughter's  household,  would  doubt- 
less, if  faithfully  transcribed,  shed  a  very  fa- 
vorable light  upon  the  nature  of  the  master  of 
the  family.  But  nothing  of  the  sort  appears. 
In  the  same  way  Felix  Holt  is  unconvincing. 


MEN   OF   STilAW  101 

His  original  objection  to  Esther  Lyon  seems 
to  lie  in  the  more  or  less  commonplace  facts  of 
her  wearing  silk  stockings  and  reading  Byron; 
and  his  attraction  for  her  rests  largely  on  the 
scolding  to  which  he  treats  her  and  his  William 
Morris  style  of  clothing  and  manners.  There 
is  no  power  of  character  shown  to  account  for 
developments.  Indeed,  this  is  one  of  the  epi- 
sodes which  a  man  of  Hardy's  genius  would 
have  carried  by  its  sheer  lyrical  intensity.  The 
ratiocinative  and  intellectual  elements  would 
be  left  out,  probably  to  advantage,  if  there 
were  not  substituted  erotic  distortions  in  their 
place.  Whether  Felix  Holt  would  become  a 
more  virile  character  is  another  question;  he 
would  certainly  be  a  more  convincing  lover. 
A  word  should  be  said  about  Adam  Bede, 
who  is  a  notable  exception  to  the  general  weak- 
ness of  the  men  whom  George  Eliot  offers  as 
typical  of  the  average,  normal  man.  In  writ- 
ing of  him  her  work  was  sufficiently  that  of 
portraiture  to  free  her  from  the  difficulties  in- 
cident to  independent  creation.  In  following 
the  development  of  a  special  character,  her  nat- 


102      GEORGE  JtiXlOl'  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

ural  defects  are  concealed  or  remedied.  This 
same  fact  accounts  for  the  extraordinary  suc- 
cess of  her  vignettes,  pen-portraits  of  unusual 
power,  of  which  more  in  their  place. 

George  Eliot's  studies  of  men  may  be  classi- 
fied roughly  into  three  general  groups.  In  the 
first  group  fall  such  highly  specialized  figures 
as  those  we  have  been  discussing — studies  of 
excellent  intention  and  indifferent  execution, 
like  tjiose  of  Felix  Holt,  Daniel  Deronda,  and 
Philip  .Wakem;  portraits  or  realistic  studies, 
usually  of  exceptional  brilliance,  such  as  Adam 
Bede,  Silas  Marner,  and  Amos  Barton;  and 
finally  a  group  which  includes  such  varying 
figures  as  Lydgate,  Tito  Melema,  Tom  Tulli- 
ver,  Will  Ladislaw  and  Grandcourt.  Outside 
of  these  are  her  vignettes  of  peasants  and  of 
country  gentry,  which  form  a  separate  and  dis- 
tinct category.  In  examining  these  groups  it 
is  a  curious  fact  that  the  most  artistically  satis- 
fying are  those  of  the  two  latter  classes,  espe- 
cially the  last.  It  is  almost  as  if  her  sympathies 
weakened  her  insight  regarding  those  whose 
idealism  she  was  most  anxious  to  uphold.    In 


MEN   OF   STRAW  103 

the  analysis  of  characters  for  whom  she  has 
httle  or  no  affection,  such  as  Matthew  Jermyn, 
the  corrupt  steward  of  Felioj  Holt,  her  per- 
ceptions are  never  at  fault.  In  showing  the 
mental  and  moral  degradation  of  Tito  Melema, 
she  makes  no  blunder,  from  the  first  thought- 
less moment  of  reticence  to  the  last  penetrat- 
ing comment  of  Romola's : 

There  was  a  man  to  whom  I  was  very  near, 
so  that  I  could  see  a  great  deal  of  his  life,  who 
made  almost  every  one  fond  of  him,  for  he  was 
young,  and  clever,  and  beautiful,  and  his  man- 
ners to  all  were  gentle  and  kind.  I  believe, 
when  I  first  knew  him,  he  never  thought  of 
anything  cruel  or  base.  But  because  he  tried 
to  slip  away  from  everything  that  was  un- 
pleasant, and  cared  for  nothing  else  so  much  as 
his  own  safety,  he  came  at  last  to  commit  some 
of  the  basest  deeds,  such  as  make  men  infa- 
mous. He  denied  his  father,  and  left  him  to 
misery;  he  betrayed  every  trust  that  was  re- 
posed in  him,  that  he  might  keep  himself  safe 
and  get  rich  and  prosperous.  Yet  calamity 
overtook  him. 


( 


With  the  representation   of  Lydgate  she 
shows  herself  equally  discerning.     Her  deli- 


104      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

cacy  of  touch  in  portraying  the  fine  and  evan- 
escent idealisms  of  his  early  professional  ca- 
reer, the  clear  vision  which  shows  the  desperate 
misfortune  of  an  ill-placed  affection,  and  the 
slow  moral  disintegration  resulting  from  an 
unworthy  marriage,  both  combine  to  make  a 
picture  possessing  the  pitifulness  which  comes 
only  from  sympathy  unbiased  by  lack  of 
knowledge.  To  a  less  complete  degree  this  is 
true  of  Will  Ladislaw. }  Grandcourt  and  Tom 
Tulliver  are  less  sympathetic  studies ;  one  feels 
in  them  the  same  broad  charity  to  excuse  and 
forgive.  It  is  in  the  portraits  drawn  from  life 
that  her  most  unforced  artistry  is  seen.  Obser- 
vation replaces  theoretic  judgment,  and  pro- 
duces a  sureness  of  touch  not  to  be  attained  by 
other  means. 

Such  a  classification  assumes  signiJScance  if 
it  leads,  as  in  this  case,  to  the  discovery  that 
among  George  Eliot's  men  there  is  no  one  to 
be  reckoned  in  the  same  relation  to  other  men 
that  Romola  bears  to  others  among  the  women. 
As  in  Deronda,  where  we  should  have  a  human 
figure  of  heroic  aspirations,  of  masculine  pro- 


MEN  OF  STRAW  105 

portions,  and  of  mortal  tenderness,  we  are 
shown  a  man  of  straw,  labelled  as  in  the  old 
morality  plays,  with  the  names  of  the  several 
virtues  he  is  designed  to  exhibit. 

Fortunately,  these  do  not  exhibit  the  whole 
range  of  George  Eliot's  observations  of  men. 
Among  those  sketches  which  I  have  called  vi- 
gnettes there  are  many  which  show  especial 
charm  and  merit.  Usually  these  are  figures 
taken  from  the  humbler  walks  of  life,  though 
this  is  not  always  true.  Sir  Christopher  Chev- 
erel,  Philip  Debarry,  and  Rufus  Lyon  are 
among  these.  Philip  Debarry  especially  is  a 
character  of  unusual  charm.  There  is  only  one 
instance  in  which  he  appears,  but  we  become 
firm  friends  at  the  end  of  it.  I  know  of  few 
more  appealing  sketches  than  this,  in  which  the 
young  patrician,  wishing  to  express  his  grati- 
tude to  the  Dissenting  clergyman,  Rufus 
Lyon,  for  the  return  of  valuable  papers,  allows 
himself  to  be  held  to  his  word  in  an  embar- 
rassing juncture  rather  than  be  untrue  to  the 
promptings  of  his   own  fastidious  sense  of 


106      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

honor.     A  single  passage  visualizes  both  the 
actors  in  this  bit  of  comedy : 

But  when  he  rose  the  next  morning,  his 
mind,  once  more  eagerly  active,  was  arrested 
by  Philip  Debarry's  letter,  which  still  lay  open 
on  his  desk,  and  was  arrested  by  precisely  that 
portion  which  had  been  unheeded  the  day  be- 
fore.— "I  shall  consider  myself  doubly  fortu- 
nate if  at  any  time  you  can  point  out  to  me 
some  method  by  which  I  may  procure  you  as 
lively  a  satisfaction  as  I  am  now  feeling,  in  that 
full  and  speedy  relief  from  anxiety  which  I 
owe  to  your  considerate  conduct." 

To  understand  how  these  words  would  carry 
the  suggestion  they  actually  had  for  the  minis- 
ter in  a  crisis  of  peculiar  personal  anxiety  and 
struggle,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  for  many 
years  he  had  walked  through  life  with  the  sense 
of  having  for  a  space  been  unfaithful  to  what 
he  esteemed  the  highest  trust  ever  committed 
to  man — the  ministerial  vocation.  In  a  mind 
of  any  nobleness,  a  lapse  into  transgression 
against  an  object  still  regarded  as  supreme,  is- 
sues in  a  new  and  purer  devotedness,  chastised 
by  humility  and  watched  over  by  a  passionate 
regret.  So  it  was  with  the  ardent  spirit  which 
animated  the  little  body  of  Rufus  Lyon.  Once 
in  his  life  he  had  been  blinded,  deafened,  hur- 


MEN   OF   STRAW  107 

ried  along  by  rebellious  impulse;  he  had  gone 
astray  after  his  own  desires,  and  had  let  the 
fire  die  out  on  the  altar;  and  as  the  true  peni- 
tent, hating  his  self -besotted  error,  asks  from 
alLcoming  life  duty  instead  of  joy,  and  service 
instead  of  ease,  so  Rufus  was  perpetually  on 
the  watch  lest  he  should  ever  again  postpone  to 
some  private  affection  a  great  public  oppor- 
tunity which  to  him  was  equivalent  to  a  com- 
mand. 

And  so  the  little  clergyman  begged  Debarry 
to  arrange  for  him  a  debate  between  Dissent 
and  Establishment,  and  the  patrician  kept  to 
the  letter  of  his  promise !  We  know  little  else 
than  this  of  him;  but  it  is  enough  to  make  of 
him  a  permanent  friend. 

So  it  is  with  Sir  Christopher  Cheverel,  with 
his  passion  for  architecture,  his  favorite  airs, 
and  his  "black-eyed  monkey" ;  with  Sir  Hugo 
Mallinger,  and  his  generous  care  for  the  child 
of  a  woman  he  had  loved ;  and  with  many  oth- 
ers beside.  Among  humbler  folk  there  are  al- 
most too  numerous  instances  for  mention.  The 
whole  company  of  worthies  at  the  "Rainbow 
Inn" ;  the  gay  Florentine  patrons  of  Nello  the 


108     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

barber,  himself  one  of  the  most  delightful  of 
them  all ;  the  mad  painter  Piero  di  Cosimo,  the 
pedlar  Bratti  Ferravecchi  and  the  rest,  and  the 
sinister  shadow  of  Baldassarre — all  these  are 
folk  whom  we  meet  in  daily  life,  and  are  to  be 
held  fortunate  if  we  esteem  at  their  true  worth. 
It  is  perhaps  most  fully  in  these  vignettes 
that  we  get  the  fruition  of  George  Eliot's  ob- 
servation of  men.  They  present,  in  artistic 
form,  the  commentary  of  one  who  sees  much 
at  a  glance  and  expresses  what  she  sees  in 
shrewd,  clear,  and  often  epigrammatic  sen- 
tences. The  condensation  in  these  sketches  is 
tremendous  and  their  vigor  unexampled. 
Hardy  has  the  same  faculty.  He  rarely  makes 
a  mistake  in  the  psychology  and  delineation  of 
these  minor  characters.  The  waits  in  The 
Return  of  the  Native,  the  farmers  and  shep- 
herds in  Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd  and 
Under  the  Greenwood  Tree — simple  tran- 
scripts of  everyday  experience,  are  among 
the  most  delightful  portions  of  his  work.  In 
so  far  as  they  deal  with  men,  they  may  also  be 
called  the  only  uniformly  successful  studies, 


MEN  OF  STRAW  109 

Contrast,  for  instance,  the  virile,  if  angular 
development  of  Henehard,  in  The  Mayor  of 
Casterhridge,  with  any  of  the  subtler  charac- 
ters; or  compare  the  cleanly-drawn  figure  of 
Farmer  Crick  at  Talbothays  Dairy  with  any 
of  the  less  masculine  heroes.  Farmer  Melbury, 
of  The  Woodlanders,  in  his  passionate  anx- 
iety to  serve  his  daughter's  best  interests,  is  a 
man  of  vitality  far  outweighing  that  of  Angel 
Clare  or  Clym  Yeobright  and  their  like. 

The  psychology  of  a  minor  character  offers 
an  interesting  field  for  speculation.  There 
are  characters  of  secondary  rank  by  reason  of 
accidental  position — people  of  whom  one  feels 
that  they  have  a  history  of  their  own,  available 
whenever  occasion  serves  for  its  production, 
though  not  necessarily  pertinent  to  the  narra- 
tive of  the  moment.  Such  folk  may  well 
achieve  greatness,  though  they  be  not  born  to 
it.  Sometimes  characters  are  minor  through 
their  own  constitution — weak  creatures  they 
are  whose  individualities  cannot  overpower 
their  circumstances,  or  "waylay  Destiny,  and 
bid  him  stand  and  deliver."    And  still  a  third 


110     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

group  is  of  those  whose  greatness  is,  as  it  were, 
thrust  upon  them — men  whose  external  his- 
tory gives  them  a  prominence  to  which  nothing 
in  their  lives  or  characters  entitles  them.  Of 
this  class  are  many  of  the  principals  whom  we 
have  been  discussing.  Half -successes  and  pos- 
itive failures  like  these  are  the  truest  index  to 
an  author's  mental  attitude.  To  have  indicated 
truly  the  outlines  of  many  personalities  widely 
divergent  is  of  more  worth  than  to  have  failed 
in  the  drawing  of  one  or  two  ambitious  at- 
tempts. Differing  as  they  do  from  one  another 
in  so  many  matters  both  of  structure  and  de- 
tail, it  is  interesting  to  find,  both  in  Thomas 
Hardy  and  George  Eliot,  the  curious  similar- 
ity, that  their  minor  characters  are  men,  their 
principals,  men  of  straw! 


VI 

"THE  SILVER  ITERANCE" 

Say  thou  dost  love  me,  love  me,  love  me — toll 
The  silver  iterance — only  minding.  Dear, 
To  love  me  also  in  silence  with  thy  soul. 

— E.  B.  Browning. 

IT  is  the  business  of  an  artist  to  give  per- 
manent form  and  record  to  those  emotions 
and  aspirations  which  lie  too  deep  for  ordinary 
speech  in  the  lives  of  men.  Such  fundamental 
yearnings  cannot,  and  should  not,  be  lightly 
laid  bare;  but  it  is  fitting  that  those  who  can 
widely  perceive  and  generously  interpret 
should  preserve  these  flowers  of  the  spirit. 
The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  give  last- 
ing expression  to  such  an  experience;  and 
Spenser's  immortal  Epithalamion — the 

Song  made  in  lieu  of  many  ornaments, 
With  which  my  love  should  duly  have  been 
dect, 

111 


112     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

Which,  setting  off  through  hasty  accidents 

Ye  would  not  stay  your  due  time  to  expect, 

But  promist  both  to  recompense ; 

Be  unto  her  a  goodly  ornament, 

And  for  short  time  an  endless  moniment, 

is  a  permanent  tribute  to  the  spiritual  forces  in 
life.  Montaigne's  Essay  on  Friendship  com- 
memorates an  ideally  perfect  friendship,  and 
the  sonnets  of  Astrophel  to  Stella  owe  their 
force  and  intensity  to  the  literal  obedience  to 
the  command 

Fool,  said  my  Muse  to  me,  look  in  thy  heart 

and  write. 
# 
To  this  record  of  passionate  love,  "wherein 

both  souls  and  bodies  might  have  entire  frui- 
tion,"   George   Eliot   gives   no    contribution. 

\ '  Love  of  many  kinds  there  is  in  plenty,  but  so 

strong  is  her  sense  of  the  tragic  absence  of  per- 

,  feet  affection,  ideally  given  and  received,  that 

^  she  does  not  venture  to  set  down  the  story  of 
those  exceptional  cases  of  the  love  that  many 
waters  cannot  part.  The  one  great  love  with 
which  she  deals  is  the  story  of  a  misplaced  af- 
fection.   On  the  other  hand,  she  does  not  pre- 


"the  silver  iterance"  113 

sent  the  stories  of  sordid,  brutal  passions,  such 
as  men  like  Hardy  use  for  the  framework  of 
their  novels.  None  of  her  instances  of  illicit 
love  are  of  this  kind.  The  sin  of  Arthur  Don- 
nithorne  with  Hetty  is  the  sin  of  undisciplined, 
ignorant  youth;  such,  in  all  probability,  was 
the  wrongdoing  between  Mrs.  Transome  and 
Matthew  Jermyn;  while  of  the  liaison  be- 
tween Grandcourt  and  Mrs.  Glasher  we  know 
too  little  to  judge.  It  is  significant  of  George 
Eliot's  tendency  that  though  the  supreme  af- 
fection of  a  man  for  a  woman  is  never  directly 
pictured,  there  are  many  folk  who  give  the 
best  of  themselves  in  their  faulty  and  imper- 
fect loves.  This  is  true  of  Tito  Melema.  His 
love  for  Romola,  cramped  and  stunted  though 
it  was  by  his  weakness,  was  yet  the  highest  ex- 
pression of  which  he  was  capable.  He  is  only 
the  most  striking  example  out  of  many  similar 
ones. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  shield  the  portrai- 
ture is  far  more  complete  and  vigorous.  Per- 
haps this  is  because  a  woman's  whole  life  can 
so  thoroughly  be  mastered  by  the  story  of  her 


114     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

/  heart,  which  plays  only  a  part  in  the  history  of 
I  a  man.  More  probably  it  is  due  to  a  funda- 
mental inability,  common  to  all  save  a  few  rare 
spirits,  to  set  down  the  most  vital  truths  of 
nature.  We  love  to  say  that  romance  is  a 
thing  of  the  past,  because  our  own  spirits  are 
too  dull  to  perceive  it ;  to  insist  that  the  instinc- 
tive spiritual  recognitions,  by  which  are  cre- 
ated the  unity  of  the  spirit  and  the  bond  of 
peace,  are  but  the  idle  vaporings  of  over- 
wrought brains;  and  to  believe  that  the  world 
in  which 

the  unfit 
Contrarious  moods  of  men  recoil  away. 

To  isolate  pure  spirits,  and  permit 
A  place  to  stand  and  love  in  for  a  day. 
With     darkness     and     the     death-hour 
rounding  it, 

is  naught  save  vain  fantasy  and  idyllic  dream- 
ing. It  may  be  so ;  but  it  is  more  to  be  feared 
that  we  have  lost  the  spiritual  insight  which 
keeps  us  in  touch  with  the  delicacies  of  feeling 
and  opens  our  senses  to  the  music  of  the 
spheres. 
I     But  even  the  highest  feeling  may  meet  with 


"the  silver  iterance"  115 

frustration  and  failure  in  its  hope.x  There  is 
no  more  pitiful  story  than  that  of  the  ruin 
wrought  by  his  marriage  out  of  the  stuff  of 
Lydgate's  life;  and  in  the  representation  of 
this  tragedy  George  Eliot  reaches  perhaps  the 
highest  level  of  realistic  portraiture.  For  Lyd- 
gate  is  conceived  as  the  type  of  the  idealist 
whose  vision  of  a  world  set  free  needs  only  the 
co-operation  of  a  devoted  woman  to  liberate 
it  and  translate  it  into  action.  At  the  time  of 
his  arrival  at  Middlemarch, 

Lydgate  was  but  seventy-and-twenty,  an 
age  at  which  many  men  are  quite  common — 
at  which  they  are  hopeful  of  achievement,  reso- 
lute in  avoidance,  thinking  that  Mammon  shall 
never  put  a  bit  in  their  mouths  and  get  astride 
their  backs,  but  rather  that  Mammon,  if  they 
have  anything  to  do  with  him,  shall  draw  their 
chariot  ....  He  was  one  of  those  rarer  lads 
who  early  get  a  decided  bent,  and  make  up 
their  minds  that  there  is  something  particular 
in  life  which  they  would  like  to  do  for  its  own 
sake,  and  not  because  their  fathers  did  it. 

Of  Rosamond  Yincy,  the  woman  for  whom 
Lydgate's  love  was  awakened,  we  have  already 


I 


116     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAEDY 

had  occasion  to  speak.  The  story  of  the  court- 
ship, the  illusion  and  artifice  by  which  it  was 
carried  on,  and  its  ultimate  end  in  marriage, 
are  all  told  with  tender  and  regretful  clearness. 
That  Lydgate  was  hurried  into  matrimony,  al- 
though unconsciously,  we  know  from  indica- 
tions such  as  this :  "When  a  man  has  seen  the 
woman  whom  he  would  have  chosen  if  he  had 
intended  to  marry  speedily,  his  remaining  a 
bachelor  will  usually  dep^id  on  her  resolu- 
tion rather  than  on  his."  And  then  the  tragedy 
begins : 

Between  Lydgate  and  Rosamond  there  was 
that  total  missing  of  each  other's  mental  track, 
which  is  too  evidently  possible  even  between 
persons  who  are  continually  thinking  of  each 
other.  To  Lydgate  it  seemed  that  he  had  been 
spending  month  after  month  in  sacrificing 
more  than  half  of  his  best  intent  and  best  pow- 
er to  his  tenderness  for  Rosamond,  bearing 
her  little  claims  and  interruptions  without  im- 
patience, and,  above  all,  bearing  without  be- 
trayal of  bitterness  to  look  through  less  and 
less  of  interfering  illusion  at  the  blank,  unre- 
flecting surface  her  mind  presented  to  his  ar- 
dor which  he  had  fancied  that  the  ideal  wife 


"the  silver  iterance"  117 

must  somehow  worship  as  sublime,  though  not 
in  the  least  knowing  why.  But  his  endurance 
was  mingled  with  a  self -discontent  which,  if  we 
know  how  to  be  candid,  we  shall  confess  to 
make  more  than  half  our  bitterness  under 
grievances,  wife  or  husband  included.  It  al- 
ways remains  true  that  if  we  had  been  greater, 
circuQistances  would  have  been  less  strong 
against  us. 

In  this  case  the  tragedy  was  not  so  much  one 
of  the  externals  of  life  but  of  the  loss  of  the 
powers  of  mind  and  heart  which  are  of  greater 
value  than  all  else.  *Tor  he  was  very  misera- 
ble. Only  those  who  know  the  supremacy  of 
the  intellectual  life — the  life  which  has  a  seed 
of  ennobling  thought  and  purpose  within  it — 
can  understand  the  grief  of  one  who  falls  from 
that  serene  activity  into  the  absorbing,  soul- 
wasting  struggle  with  worldly  annoyances." 
To  such  a  struggle  there  could  only  be  one  out- 
come, and  George  Eliot's  reflection  contains 
the  saddest  recognition  of  the  result : 

We  are  not  afraid  of  telling  over  and  over 
again  how  a  man  comes  to  fall  in  love  with  a 
woman  and  be  wedded  to  her,  or  else  be  fatally 


118     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

parted  from  her.  Is  it  due  to  the  excess  of 
poetry  or  of  stupidity  that  we  are  never  weary 
of  describing  what  King  James  called  a  wom- 
an's "makdom  and  her  fairness,"  never  weary 
of  listening  to  the  twanging  of  the  old  Trouba- 
dour strings,  and  are  comparatively  uninter- 
ested in  that  other  kind  of  "makdom  and  fair- 
ness" which  must  be  wooed  with  industrious 
thought  and  patient  renunciation  of  sm^all  de- 
sires? In  the  story  of  this  passion,  too,  the 
development  varies;  sometimes  it  is  the  glori- 
ous marriage,  sometimes  frustration  and  final 
parting.  And  not  seldom  the  catastrophe  is 
wound  up  with  that  other  passion,  sung  by  the 
Troubadours.  For  in  the  multitude  of  middle- 
aged  men  who  go  about  their  vocations  in  a 
daily  course  determined  for  them  in  much  the 
same  way  as  the  tie  of  their  cravats,  there  is  al- 
ways a  good  number  who  meant  to  shape  their 
own  deeds  and  alter  the  world  a  little.  The 
story  of  their  coming  to  be  shapen  after  the  av- 
erage, and  fit  to  be  packed  by  the  gross,  is 
hardly  ever  told,  even  in  their  consciousness; 
for  perhaps  their  ardor  for  generous,  unpaid 
toil  cooled  as  imperceptibly  as  the  ardor  of 
their  youthful  loves,  till  one  day  their  earlier 
self  walked  like  a  ghost  in  its  old  home,  and 
made  the  new  furniture  ghastly — nothing  in 
the  world  more  subtle  than  the  process  of  their 
gradual  change!     In  the  beginning  they  in- 


"the  silver  iterance"  119 

haled  it  unknowingly :  you  and  I  may  have  sent 
some  of  our  breath  toward  infecting  them, 
when  we  uttered  our  conforming  falsities,  or 
drew  our  silly  conclusions;  or  perhaps  it  came 
with  the  vibrations  of  a  woman's  eyes. 

This  is  what  happened  to  LydgateJJTIn  the 
reverse  order,  it  was  partly  what  Savonarola's 
influence  saved   Romola   from — the   negation 
of  the  higher  self  by  baser  demands.    It  is  dis- 
couraging to  contemplate  such  an  end  to  hu- 
man endeavor  and  to  human  love.     The  old,   t 
ascetic  ideal  of  celibacy  were  better  than  this  / 
gradual    and    insidious    deterioration.      It    is 
worth  while  to  notice  the  differences  between 
these  effects  of  unhappy  marriage  upon  Lyd- 
gate  and  upon  Romola.    The  last  sentence  of 
a  previous  citation  indicates  the  point  of  ap- 
proach:    ''If  we  had  heen  greater ^  circurn-  t 
stances  would  have  heen  less  strong  against  us"  J 
Lydgate  was  not  strong  enough  to  withstand* 
the  continual  pressure  of  his  wife's  pettiness 
and  small-mindedness,  and  the  bitterness  which 
resulted  from  this  made  an  additional  factor 
in  his  destruction.    The  same  bitterness,  which 


120      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

led  Romola  to  seek  to  evade  her  duties  in  flight, 
was  met  and  overcome  by  Fra  Girolamo's  pow- 
erful interference.  But  in  her  case  the  bitter- 
ness passed  away  in  a  higher  self-renunciation 
than  any  which  could  have  been  achieved  with- 
out the  antecedent  suffering. 

Truly  regarded,  this  is  the  end  of  all  sor- 
row— that  it  brings  with  it  a  higher  sense  of 
duties  and  a  deeper  fidelity  to  the  ideal  of  serv- 
ice. That  this  was  George  Eliot's  sense  of  it 
we  may  gather  from  the  words  which  she  put 
into  the  mouth  of  Savonarola,  during  the  im- 
portant conversation  just  refen-ed  to:  "Man 
cannot  choose  his  duties.  You  may  choose  to 
forsake  your  duties,  and  choose  not  to  have  the 
sorrow  which  they  bring.  But  you  will  go 
forth;  and  what  will  you  find,  my  daughter? 
Sorrow  without  duty — bitter  herbs,  and  no 
bread  with  them.  If  there  is  a  cry  of  anguish, 
you,  my  daughter,  because  you  know  the  mean- 
ing of  that  cry,  should  be  there  to  still  it  ,  .  . 
Sorrow  has  come  to  teach  you  a  new  worship." 

Too  often  we  forget  this  in  our  rebellion 
against  the  laws  or  barriers  that  separate  us 


"the  silver  iterance"  121 

from  our  desires.  .When  there  grows  up  in  us, 
as  in  Lydgate,  a  bitterness  against  fate  and 
ourselves,  we  have  lost  the  greater  part  of  what 
makes  for  spiritual  growth.  Thereby  we  for- 
get that  out  of  distress  and  suffering  there 
comes  a  wisdom  higher  than  ourselves,  and 
one  which  we  can  attain  in  no  other  way.  And 
out  of  this  suffering  comes  patience,  "and  pa- 
tience worketh  experience,  and  experience 
hope ;  and  hope  maketh  not  ashamed." 

Some  such  end  is  the  goal  of  all  George 
Eliot's  love-stories,  whether  they  be  tragic  or 
joyous.  We  are  not  allowed  to  forget  the 
beauty  and  freshness  and  charm  of  human 
love;  but  we  are  neither  allowed  to  ignore  the 
strength  and  sweetness  which  should  come 
from  love  tested  by  tribulation. 

At  the  opposite  extreme  is  love  as  Hardy 
knows  it — ^the  love  which  in  its  lowest  forms  is 
licentious,  often,  and  brutal;  which  is  mincing 
and  artificial  in  its  more  common  forms;  and 
which,  among  those  who  should  represent  the 
highest  phases  of  development,  is  either  the 
torrential    passion — "too    like   the   lightning, 


122      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

(vhich  doth  cease  to  be  Ere  one  can  say  'It  light- 
Zens,'  " — or  a  bodiless  creation,  compact  of 
I  metaphysics  and  sentiment.  There  is  either  a 
Iruthless  denial  of  the  fleshly  lusts,  or  an  equally 
truthless  glorification  of  them.     Swinburne's 

paradoxical  chorus  expresses  the  situation  as 

well  as  words  can: 

"We  have  seen  thee,  O  Love,  thou  are 
fair;  thou  art  goodly,  O  Love, 

Thy  wings  make  light  in  the  air  as  the 
wings  of  a  dove. 

Thy  feet  are  as  winds  that  divide  the 
stream  of  the  sea; 

Earth  is  thy  covering  to  hide  thee,  the  gar- 
ment of  thee. 

Thou  art  swift  and  subtle  and  blind  as  a 
flame  of  fire. 

Before  thee  the  laughter,  behind  thee  the 
tears  of  desire. 

And  twain  go  forth  beside  thee,  a  man 
with  a  maid ; 

Her  eyes  are  the  eyes  of  a  bride,  whom  de- 
light makes  afraid ; 

As  the  breath  in  the  buds  that  stir  is  her 
bridal  breath; — 

But  Fate  is  the  name  of  her,  and  his  name 
is  Death." 


'*THE    SILVER   ITERANCE" 


123 


Out  of  the  disintegration  of  such  loves  there 
can  spring  no  such  spiritual  poise  and  dignity 
as  comes  from  the  other  forms.  The  result  is 
necessarily  passion,  destruction,  and  death  or 
dishonor. 

These  loves  impose  no  duties  upon  the  lov-t 
ers.    Angel  Clare  sees  no  human  duty  to  pre-\ 
vent  his  leaving  Tess  upon  the  discovery  of  her\ 
misfortune.    The  case  is  exactly  parallel  with  I 
Romola's  determination  to  leave  Tito ;  hut  both  A 
the  attempted  flight  and  its  result  lead  to  op- 
posite ends.     For  Romola,  after  her  second 
departure,  returns  to  her  duties  as  a  patrician 
and  a  woman  stronger  and  nobler  than  before, 
able  to  take  up  her  share  of  the  city's  life,  and 
to  restore  tranquillity  and  comfort  to  those 
whom  her  husband's  misdeeds  had  wronged. 
Angel  Clare  is  driven  back  to  Tess  by  the  ser-\ 
pent  lashes  of  the  Eumenides;  chastened  and\ 
broken  in  spirit,  he  returns  to  the  woman  upon  \ 
whom  his  desertion  had  brought  the  bitterest 
fate  known  to  womankind,  only  to  see  her 
ruin  complete.    Of  his  own  blood-guiltiness  he   i 
has  no  realization.    It  does  not  occur  to  him 


,Ai' 


124'     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

that  in  her  own  person  Tess  prefigures  the 
atonement  of  one  for  the  sins  of  many.  In 
shghtly  different  fashion  Sue  Bridehead  forces 
upon  others  the  retribution  which  should  justly 
overtake  herself.  The  story  of  her  marriage  to 
Phillotson,  her  desertion  of  him,  though  by  his 
:permission,  and  her  final  rehabilitation  by 
means  of  the  formal  legalism  of  a  remarriage, 
is  an  instance  of  suff*ering  which  should  have 
found  its  corrective  in  a  sense  of  duty.  The 
fact  that  Phillotson  is  a  man  of  doubtful  at- 
tractiveness, save  of  character,  is  not  material. 
There  is  a  curious  description  of  him,  which 
shows  at  once  the  crudity  and  the  insight  of 
Hardy's  work: 

"I  can  mind  the  man,"  remarks  the  Widow 
Edhn  of  Phillotson,  "I  can  mind  the  man  very 
well.  A  very  civil,  honorable  liver — but  Lord 
— I  don't  want  to  wound  your  feelings — but— 
there  be  certain  men  here  and  there  that  no 
woman  of  any  niceness  can  stomach.  I  should 
have  said  he  was  one." 

;      From  this  speech  Sue  retired  in  confusion, 
and  Jude  followed  her  in  anxious  solicitude. 

*'I  don't  mind  her  roughness  one  bit." 


THE   SILVER  ITERANCE  125 

What  is  it,  then?" 

It  is  that  what  she  says  is — is  true!" 


That  a  woman,  feeling  this  repulsion,  as  Sue 
did  from  the  beginning,  should  nevertheless 
have  consented  to  yoke  herself  for  life  with  its 
object,  is  evidence  of  fundamental  ignorance 
in  the  first  instance;  that,  being  free  from  him, 
any  vague  hope  of  reparation  should  force  her 
back  to  him,  even  in  the  revulsion  of  feeling  in- 
cident to  such  an  event  as  the  murder  of  her 
children  by  *'Father  Time,"  is  indisputable 
proof  of  thoroughgoing  ignorance  of  basic  hu- 
man duties  and  privileges. 

The  comparison  between  Romola  and  Sue  is 
perhaps  an  apposite  one  in  this  connection. 
What  Romola  is  brought  to  realize  is  the  larger 
duty  to  an  impersonal  ideal  which  demands  the 
subordination  of  her  own  personality,  even  to 
the  extent  of  remaining  with  a  man  for  whom 
her  original  love  had  given  place  to  contempt. 
What  Sue  made  the  basis  of  her  action  was  an 
individual  rebellion  against  a  situation  which 
demanded  all  her  gifts  of  mind  and  heart  to 


126      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

overcome  and  ameliorate.  Romola  achieved 
the  independence  of  her  life;  Sue  was  broken 
to  the  level  of  sordid  subservience  to  the  call  of 
the  flesh. 

It  has  always  been  difficult  to  understand 
the  meaning  of  the  pronouncement  that  "He 
who  would  save  his  life  must  lose  it."  In  Ro- 
mola  and  Sue  we  have  illustrations  which  show 
in  some  fashion  the  out-working  of  the  para- 
dox. A  positive  duty  is  that  which  lies  above 
and  beyond  the  individual  self-development. 
Hardy  admits  no  such  possibility;  and  there- 
fore his  universe  has  nothing  stable  to  which 
frail  humanity  may  cling  for  safety.  It  is  lit- 
tle wonder  that  the  end  is  invariably  tragedy 
and  ironic  mirth. 

There  is  another  phase  in  which  the  differen- 
tiation between  George  Eliot  and  Hardy  is 
especially  strongly  marked.  This  is  in  regard 
to  their  vie^  of  the  voluntary  nature  of  the 
aff ections/S^o  Hardy  the  idea  that  it  is  possi- 
ble to  set  a  watch  over  one's  emotions  is,  on 
the  face  of  it,  preposterous.  He  does  not  ad- 
mit any  self-control  strong  enough  to  combat 


"the  silver  iterance"  127 

the  instinct  for  sex,  or  any  need  for  cojjibating 
it  either  physically  or  emotionally,  f  George 
Eliot's  position  we  can  judge;  in  Middle- 
march  she  makes  this  comment:  "When  a  ten- 
der affection  has  been  storing  itself  in  us 
through  many  of  our  years,  the  idea  that  we 
could  accept  any  exchange  for  it  seems  to  be  a 
cheapening  of  our  lives.  And  we  can  set  a  I 
watch  over  our  emotions  and  our  constancy  as  I 
we  can  over  other  treasures."      \ 

The  point  might  be  raised:  Which  of  these 
two  views  holds  the  truest  appreciation  of  the 
value  of  the  affections?  George  Eliot's  self- 
restrained,  conservative  feeling  seems  at  first 
sight  a  more  pedestrian  emotion  than  that 
which  Hardy  portrays.  It  sounds  more  pro- 
saic, lacking  in  intensity,  in  enthusiasm,  even  in 
vitality  as  contrasted  with  Hardy's  glowing, 
devouring  flame.  We  are  asked  to  judge  upon 
the  basis  of  the  immediate  effect,  not  by  any 
tedious  calculation  of  the  result  after  laborious 
years.  Of  course  there  are  many  forms  of  love, 
and  many  expressions  of  it,  ranging  from  the 
passionate  cry  "I  charge  you,  O  ye  daughters 


128      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

of  Jerusalem,  by  the  roes,  by  the  hinds  of  the 
field,  that  ye  stir  not  up  nor  awaken  my  love 
until  he  please,"  to  the  no  less  intense  but  far 
more  tranquil  assurance : 

I  love  thee  to  the  depth  and  breadth  and 

height 
My  soul  can  reach,  when  groping  out  of 

sight 
For  the  ends  of  being,  and  ideal  grace. 

In  Hardy,  so  easy  is  the  transference  of  af- 
fection from  one  to  another,  among  both  men 
and  women,  that  we  are  compelled  to  believe 
that  the  intense  passion  must  be  lacking  in  per- 
manence, if  not  in  immediate  strength.  The 
love  that  gains  in  its  intensity  from  community 
of  interests,  siaiilarity  of  tastes,  and  congenial- 
ity, may  be  as  intense  as  that  which  rests  on 
physical  allurements ;  but  no  such  basis  for  per- 
manence is  shown  or  expected  in  Hardy's  pic- 
tures. The  love  of  Diggory  Venn  the  reddle- 
man  for  Thomasin  Yeobright,  which  comes 
nearest  to  the  union  of  passionate  intensity 
with  sound  intellectual  comradeship,  is  none 
the  less  a  variant  upon  the  old  theme. 


"the  silveh  iterance"  129 

Knowledge  might  pity  win,  and  pity  grace 
obtain. 

"The  silver  iterance"  is  spoken  in  many 
phrases  and  in  many  ways  throughout  the  nov- 
els of  Hardy  and  of  George  Eliot.  It  is  al- 
ways a  joyous  thing  to  hear — "Is  it  due  to  an 
excess  of  poetry  or  of  stupidity  that  we  are 
never  weary  of  listening  to  the  twanging  of 
the  old  Troubadour  strings?" — and  it  is  a 
theme  whose  freshness  we  should  never  be  al- 
lowed to  forget.  But  we  may  fairly  ask  that 
we  be  also  reminded  of  that  other  qualifica- 
tion, that  beside  the  continual  repetition  we 
may  also  know  the  love  that  lives  in  silence  in 
the  soul.  Of  these  silences  Hardy  gives  no 
glimpse.  Among  the  men  and  women  of  mid- 
dle life  who  appear  throughout  his  stories, 
there  are  none  in  whose  stillness  we  can  hear 
the  echoes  of  that  earlier  iteration.  The  youth- 
ful love,  be  it  never  so  furious,  dies  out  leaving 
gray,  cold  ashes,  without  a  spark  which  may 
kindle  new  fires.  George  Eliot,  on  the  con- 
trary, though  she  shows  so  much  less  of  the 
"silver  iterance^"  has  memorialized  the  silences. 


130      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

Between  Amos  Barton  and  Milly  there  existed 
the  silent  love;  Sir  Christopher  kept  this  for 
Lady  Cheverel;  and  Adam  Bede's  love  for 
Dinah  was  a  silent  proof  of  the  thing  which 
stood  beyond  the  realm  of  speech.  These  are 
but  a  few  of  many  instances  which  might  be 
cited ;  but  they  serve  to  illustrate  the  tendency. 
They  represent  something  more  vital  than  the 
test  of  mere  laborious  time,  for  they  deal  with 
the  inner  guarded  constancy  which  is  a  real 
treasure. 

We  shall  always  love  to  listen  to  the  "silver 
interance";  but  it  will  continue  to  be  the  dis- 
tinction of  only  a  few  rare  spirits  to  give  ut- 
terance to  the  silence  of  the  soul. 


VII 
THE  INCREMENT  OF  YEARS 

ALM#ST  all  of  us  have  a  fairly  clear  idea 
of  "that  which  should  accompany  old 
age."  Whatever  the  rank  of  society,  the  con- 
ception of  "honor,  love,  obedience,  troops  of 
friends,"  shows  but  little  variation.  This  does 
not  mean  that  all  portraits  of  old  age  are  alike ; 
but  it  does  mean  a  uniformity  of  feeling  in  re- 
gard to  the  place  which  age  should  occupy  in 
the  social  order.  In  addition,  it  presupposes 
a  certain  background  of  relationships,  past  and 
present,  which  serve  to  limit  and  define  charac- 
ter. This  is  perhaps  the  most  interesting  view 
of  advancing  years,  as  it  is  the  simplest. 

The  pictures  of  old  age  in  Thomas  Hardy 
and  in  George  Eliot  are  especially  rich  in  this 
interweaving  of  motives.     The  sentiment  of 

parenthood  is  shown  with  especial  charm.    To 

131 


132     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

Hardy,  for  whom  so  few  of  the  human  rela- 
tions deserve  reference,  this  receives  uniformly 
syrapathetic  and  deferential  treatment.  Of 
his  studies  of  character  none  are  more  convinc- 
ing than  those  in  which  the  unselfish  devotion 
of  father  for  daughter  or  mother  for  son  is 
shown.  George  Eliot,  with  the  same  delicacy 
of  feeling,  none  the  less  fails  to  present  any 
such  intensified  portraits  as  the  three  in  which 
Hardy  reaches  his  greatest  power.  These 
three  are  striking  instances.  The  devotion  of 
Mrs.  Yeobright  to  her  son  Clym;  the  love  of 
Henchard  for  Elizabeth  Jane;  and  the  pas- 
sionate watchfulness  of  Melbury  for  Grace, 
are  among  the  characterizations  which  we 
should  not  wish  to  lose.  In  this  instance,  at 
least.  Hardy  has  abandoned  the  neuroticism 
which  signalizes  most  of  his  work,  and  has  set 
his  artistic  gifts  at  the  service  of  a  human 
theme  of  simple,  sincere  earnestness  and  dig- 
nity. 

The  love  of  Henchard  for  his  step-daughter 
is  the  central  motive  of  The  Mayor  of  Cos- 
terhridge.     After  a  grim  opening  episode — 


THE  INCREMENT  OF  YEARS  133 

the  selling  of  his  wife  by  Henchard  in  a  fit  of 
drunken  despair — an  interval  of  seventeen  or 
eighteen  years  shows  the  wife  seeking  for  her 
lost  husband,  and  accompanied  by  her  daugh- 
ter, presumably  the  same  who  was  sold  with 
her.  The  discovery  of  her  husband  in  the  per- 
son of  the  Mayor  of  Casterbridge,  his  single- 
minded  anxiety  to  repair  the  wrong  of  earlier 
days,  and  the  recognition  of  her  child,  are 
merely  the  setting  for  a  larger  drama.  For  it 
becomes  known,  through  accident,  that  this  is 
not  his  daughter,  who  had  died  in  early  child- 
hood, but  another.  The  steps  in  his  emotional 
development  are  worth  tracing. 

Of  Henchard  himself  we  get  an  illuminat- 
ing suggestion  in  one  brief  sentence  describ- 
ing his  attitude  toward  bookkeeping  and  kin- 
dred necessities  of  a  business  career:  "Hen- 
chard himself  was  mentally  and  physically 
unfit  for  grubbing  subtleties  from  soiled  pa- 
per; he  had,  in  a  modern  sense,  received  the 
education  of  Achilles,  and  found  penmanship 
a  tantalizing  art."  He  was  the  kind  of  man 
whose  affections  as  well  as  his  exactions  might 


134     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

well  prove  tyrannical.  Of  the  watch  which 
he  set  over  himself  and  his  determination 
in  whatever  he  undertook,  a  single  instance 
will  suffice:  "He  pressed  on  the  preparation 
for  his  union,  or  rather  reunion,  with  this  pale 
creature  in  a  dogged,  unflinching  spirit  which 
did  credit  to  his  conscientiousness.  Nobody- 
would  have  conceived  from  his  outward  de- 
meanor that  there  was  no  amatory  fire  or 
pulse  of  romance  acting  as  stimulant  to  the 
bustle  going  on  in  his  gaunt,  great  house; 
nothing  but  three  large  resolves — one  to  make 
amends  to  his  neglected  Susan,  another  to 
provide  a  comfortable  home  for  Elizabeth 
Jane  under  his  paternal  eye,  and  a  third  to 
castigate  himself  with  the  thorns  which  these 
restitutory  acts  brought  in  their  train,  among 
them  the  lowering  of  his  dignity  in  public 
opinion  by  marrying  so  comparatively  humble 
a  woman." 

Of  Elizabeth  Jane  it  should  be  noted  that 
she  is  one  of  the  exceptional  instances — al- 
most the  only  instance  in  Hardy — of  a  beau- 
tiful human  character  rising  out  of  a  welter 


THE   INCREMENT   OF   YEARS  135 

of  corrupting  influences.  With  her  heredity 
Hardy  has  no  concern;  he  merely  notes  the 
unexplainable  phenomenon — fortunately  a  less 
rare  one  than  he  would  assume.  It  is  not  sur- 
prising that  the  discovery  that  this  child  was 
not  his  own  should  have  produced  a  strong 
revulsion  of  feeling  in  Henchard;  nor  that 
under  the  influence  of  this  feeling  he  should 
have  treated  her  with  coldness  and  a  measure 
of  injustice.  Of  his  gradual  return  to  his 
older  feeling  we  get  occasional  glimpses.  "He 
had  liked  the  look  of  her  face  as  she  answered 
him  from  the  stairs.  There  had  been  afl*ec- 
tion  in  it ;  and  above  all  things  what  he  desired 
now  was  affection  from  anything  that  was 
good  and  pure.  She  was  not  his  own ;  yet,  for 
the  first  time,  he  had  a  faint  dream  that  he 
might  get  to  like  her  as  his  own,  if  she  would 
only  continue  to  love  him." 

In  the  misfortunes  and  reverses  which  be- 
set him,  this  desire  for  the  affection  of  his 
step -daughter  continued  the  one  constant  fac- 
tor in  Henchard's  life.  ''Shorn  one  by  one  of 
all  other  interests,  his  life  seemed  centering  on 


136      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

the  personality  of  this  step -daughter  whose 
presence  but  recently  he  could  not  endure.'' 
"In  truth,  a  great  change  had  come  over  him 
with  regard  to  her,  and  he  was  developing  the 
dream  of  a  future  lit  by  her  filial  presence,  as 
though  that  way  alone  could  happiness  lie/' 

The  story  of  the  frustration  of  tliis  hope 
for  happiness  is  reverently  told — of  Elizabeth 
Jane's  own  misunderstanding  and  misinter- 
pretation, of  the  attempted  reconciliation  and 
the  misconception  which  sent  Henchard  away 
from  the  wedding  feast  with  his  peace-offering 
uncompleted.  "He  had  not  expressed  to  her 
any  regrets  or  excuses  for  what  he  had  done 
in  the  past,  but  it  was  a  part  of  his  nature  to 
extenuate  nothing,  and  live  on  as  one  of  his 
own  worst  accusers."  That  the  understand- 
ing and  sympathy  should  come  too  late,  is  an 
irony  on  which  Hardy  does  not  dwell  at  any 
length — ^perhaps  for  that  reason  the  more 
poignant. 

This  is  the  history  of  a  normal  human  rela- 
tion with  normal  incompleteness  and  imper- 
fection.   It  is  refreshing,  to  say  the  least,  in 


THE   INCREMENT  OF   YEARS  137 

a  wilderness  of  such  monstrosities  as  Hardy 
best  knows  how  to  put  together.  Of  equal 
charm  is  the  recital  of  the  devotion  of  Mel- 
bury,  the  timber  merchant  of  Little  Hintock, 
to  the  welfare  of  his  only  daughter — a  devo- 
tion which  includes  elements  not  present  in 
the  story  of  Henchard  and  Elizabeth  Jane. 
In  the  background  stands  an  inconspicuous 
figure  of  a  woman  whose  whole  life  was 
shaped  and  subordinated  to  this  dominant  af- 
fection. "Melbury,  in  dread  lest  the  only 
woman  who  cared  for  the  girl  should  be  in- 
duced to  leave  her,  had  persuaded  the  mild 
Lucy  to  marry  him.  The  arrangement, — for 
it  was  little  more — ^had  worked  satisfactorily 
enough;  Grace  had  thriven,  and  Melbury  had 
not  repented." 

The  curious  provincial  union  of  simplicity 
and  shrewdness  is  shown  in  Melbury  in  a 
number  of  phases.  Not  the  least  interesting 
is  his  attitude  toward  Dr.  Fitzpiers : 

Melbury's  respect  for  Fitzpiers  was  based 
less  on  his  professional  position,  which  was  not 
much,  than  on  the  standing  of  his  family  in  the 


138     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

county  in  by-gone  days.  That  implicit  faith 
in  members  of  long-estabHshed  families,  as 
such,  irrespective  of  their  personal  condition 
or  character,  which  is  still  found  among  old- 
fashioned  people  in  the  rural  districts,  reached 
its  full  intensity  in  Melbury.  His  daughter's 
suitor  was  descended  from  a  family  he  had 
heard  of  in  his  grandfather's  time  as  being  once 
great,  a  family  which  had  conferred  its  name 
upon  a  neighboring  village:  how  could  there 
be  anything  amiss  in  this  betrothal  ? 

Melbury  is  pictured  as  a  man  of  entirely 
sane  and  healthy  morality,  therefore  the  dis- 
covery of  Fitzpiers'  infidelity,  which,  in  true 
Hardy  fashion,  is  shown  to  be  the  result  of 
traits  in  his  nature  not  to  be  overruled  or 
silenced,  is  a  shock  which  affects  his  whole 
being.  "He  had  a  ghastly  sense  that  he  alone 
would  be  responsible  for  whatever  unhappi- 
ness  should  be  brought  upon  her  for  whom 
he  almost  solely  lived,  whom  to  retain  undeT 
his  roof  he  had  faced  the  numerous  inconven- 
iences involved  in  giving  up  the  best  part  of 
his  house  to  Fitzpiers.  That  Fitzpiers  could 
allow  himself  to  look  on  any  other  creature 


THE   INCREMENT   OF   YEARS  139 

than  Grace  for  a  moment  filled  Melbury  with 
grief  and  astonishment.  In  the  pure  and  sim- 
ple life  he  had  led  it  had  scarcely  occurred  to 
him  that  after  marriage  a  man  might  be  faith- 
less." 

Of  the  change  which  this  discovery  brought 
about  in  Melbury's  nature  Hardy  gives  a 
penetrating  and  discriminating  picture.  In- 
deed, the  whole  characterization  of  Melbury, 
a  man  in  whom  he  recognizes,  in  one  of  the 
rare  cases,  the  existence  of  thoroughly  normal 
passions  and  desires,  of  normal  human  loves 
and  sympathies,  is  without  flaw  or  blemish: 

The  suspicion  that  his  darling  child  was  be- 
ing slighted  wrought  almost  a  miraculous 
change  in  Melbury's  nature.  No  man  so  fur- 
tive for  the  time  as  the  ingenuous  countryman 
who  finds  that  his  ingenuousness  has  been 
abused.  Melbury's  heretofore  confidential 
candor  towards  his  gentlemanly  son-in-law  was 
displaced  by  a  feline  stealth  that  did  injury  to 
his  every  action,  thought,  and  mood.  He  knew 
that  a  woman  once  given  to  a  man  for  life 
took,  as  a  rule,  her  lot  as  it  came,  and  made  the 
best  of  it,  without  external  interference;  but 
for  the  first  time  he  asked  himself  why  this  so 


140      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

generally  should  be  so.  .  .  .  Wisely,  or  un- 
wisely, and  whatever  other  fathers  did,  he  re- 
solved to  fight  his  daughter's  battle  still. 

That  he  was  never  fully  taken  into  his 
daughter's  confidence  as  to  the  unhappiness  of 
her  married  life  is  shown  as  an  evidence  of 
the  acute  sensitiveness  developed  by  affection. 
"The  insight  which  is  bred  of  deep  sympathy 
was  never  more  finely  exemplified  than  in  this 
instance.  Through  her  guarded  manner  he 
discerned  the  interior  of  Grace's  life  only  too 
truty,  hidden  as  were  its  incidents  from  every 
outer  eye."  This  development,  in  a  nature 
naturally  unsuspecting  and  free  from  over- 
subtlety,  is  the  reflection  of  one  of  the  sunny 
phases  of  life  which  Hardy  rarely  pictures, 
and  one  for  which  we  cannot  be  too  grateful. 

The  story  of  Mrs.  Ye^bright,  and  her  pas- 
sionate devotion  to  her  son  Clym,  culminating 
as  it  did  in  the  tragic  attempt  to  bring  about 
that  reconciliation  which  was  eternally  frus- 
trated by  the  guiltiness  of  Eustacia,  presents 
a  new  aspect  of  the  passion  of  parenthood.  To 
understand  this  it  is  necessary  to  remember 


THE   INCREMENT   OF   YEARS  141 

her  peculiarities  of  manner  and  position.  "She 
was  a  woman  of  middle  age,  with  well  formed 
features  of  the  type  usually  found  where  per- 
spicacity is  the  chief  quality  enthroned  within. 
At  moments  she  seemed  to  be  regarding  issues 
from  a  Nebo  denied  to  others  around.  She 
had  something  of  an  estranged  mien;  the  soli- 
tude exhaled  from  the  heath  was  concentrated 
in  this  face  that  had  risen  from  it.  The  air 
with  which  she  looked  at  the  heathmen  betok- 
ened a  certain  unconcern  at  their  presence,  or 
at  what  might  be  their  opinions  of  her  for 
walking  in  that  lonely  spot  at  such  an  hour, 
thus  indirectly  implying  that  in  some  respect 
or  other  they  were  not  up  to  her  level.  The 
explanation  lay  in  the  fact  that  though  her 
husband  had  been  a  small  farmer,  she  herself 
was  a  curate's  daughter,  who  had  once  dreamt 
of  doing  better  things." 

These  elements  in  her  nature,  which  re- 
moved Mrs.  Yeobright  from  the  sphere  of  or- 
dinary Egdon  farm-folk,  made  her  peculiarly 
susceptible  to  the  finer  emotions  and  instincts 
which  were  a  part  of  the  natural  inheritance 


142      GEOKGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

of  her  son.  "His  theory  and  his  wishes  about 
devoting  his  future  to  teaching  had  made  an 
impression  on  Mrs.  Yeobright.  Indeed,  how 
could  it  be  otherwise,  when  he  was  a  part  of 
her — ^where  their  discourses  were  as  if  carried 
on  between  the  right  and  the  left  hands  of  the 
same  body?  He  had  despaired  of  reaching 
her  by  argument,  and  it  was  almost  as  a  dis- 
covery to  him  that  he  could  reach  her  by  a 
magnetism  which  was  as  superior  to  words  as 
words  are  to  yells.  Strangely  enough,  he  be- 
gan to  feel  now  that  it  would  not  be  so  hard 
to  persuade  her  who  was  his  best  friend  that 
comparative  poverty  was  essentially  the  high- 
er course  for  him,  as  to  reconcile  to  his  feel- 
ings the  act  of  persuading  her." 

There  follows  a  remarkable  analysis  of  Mrs. 
Yeobright's  character  and  perceptions — one 
which  is  unexcelled  in  vigor  and  understand- 
ing: 

She  had  a  singular  insight  into  his  life,  con- 
sidering that  she  had  never  mixed  with  it. 
There  are  instances  of  persons  who  without 
cleai*  ideas  of  the  things  they  criticize,  have  yet 


THE   INCREMENT  OF   YEARS  143 

had  clear  ideas  of  the  relations  of  those  things. 
In  the  social  sphere  these  gifted  ones  are  mostly 
women;  they  can  watch  a  world  which  they 
never  saw,  and  estimate  forces  which  they  have 
only  heard.  We  call  it  intuition.  .  .  .  What 
was  the  great  world  to  Mrs.  Yeohright?  A 
multitude  whose'tendencies  could  be  perceived 
though  not  its  essences.  Communities  were 
seen  by  her  as  from  a  distance;  she  saw  them 
as  we  see  the  throngs  which  cover  the  canvases 
of  Van  Alsloot,  and  others  of  that  school,  vast 
masses  of  being,  jostling,  zigzagging,  and  pro- 
cessioning in  definite  directions,  but  whose  fea- 
tures are  indistinguishable  by  the  very  compre- 
hensiveness of  the  view.  One  could  see  that,  as 
far  as  it  had  gone,  her  life  was  very  complete 
on  its  reflective  side.  The  philosophy  of  her 
nature,  and  its  limitation  by  circumstances,  was 
almost  written  in  her  movements.  They  had 
a  majestic  foundation,  though  they  were  far 
from  being  majestic;  and  they  had  a  ground 
work  of  assurance,  but  they  were  not  assured. 
As  her  once  elastic  walk  had  become  deadened 
by  time,  so  had  her  natural  pride  of  life  been 
hindered  in  its  blooming  by  her  necessities. 

The  story  of  the  attempt  of  such  a  woman 
to  become  reconciled  to  the  alienation  of  her 
son's  affections,  and  of  her  pathetic  endeavor 


144      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

to  make  peace  with  her  son's  wife,  is  one  of 
the  most  moving  tales  in  Hardy's  repertory. 
It  is  perfect  in  every  detail.  Even  the  six 
old-fashioned  tea-cups,  mute  evidences  of  a 
peace-offering  never  completed,  have  their  own 
characteristic  message  toward  the  appreciation 
of  character. 

It  is  part  of  the  irony  which  invests  the  or- 
der of  the  world  in  Hardy's  eyes  that  the  im- 
pression left  in  the  mind  of  Clym  is  of  her  bit- 
terness and  resentfulness  at  his  supposed  in- 
difference. The  words  spoken  in  grief  and 
anguish  to  the  little  boy  who  last  saw  her 
conscious,  representing  as  they  did  the  reac- 
tion from  a  state  of  mind  charged  with 
emotional  anxiety,  were  not  true  indices  of 
her  belief  in  her  son;  yet  it  was  inevitable  that 
they  should  be  so  interpreted  by  her  son,  in 
his  complete  ignorance  of  both  her  motives 
and  her  desire.  One  is  inevitably  led  to  recol- 
lect the  story  of  Lear  and  Cordelia,  though 
the  parallel  is  by  no  means  exact.  There  is 
something  in  the  emotional  tension  which  sug- 
gests the  mad  old  king,  plucking  "darnel  and 


THE  INCREMENT  Ot  YEARS  145 

all  the  idle  weeds  that  grow,"  and  vainly 
struggling  to  persuade  himself  that  his  jewel 
still  lives.  It  is  in  analyses  like  these  that  one 
realizes  the  vigor  of  Hardy's  artistry  and  skill. 
This  view  of  parental  affection  is  a  large 
one  and  a  generous  one  withal.  It  is  free 
from  morbidness  and  from  the  taint  of  irreg- 
ularity which  runs  through  so  much  of  Har- 
dy's presentation  of  the  human  relations.  Most 
worthy  is  the  artistic  skill  which  makes  such 
delineation  possible.  George  Eliot's  point  of  i 
view  differs  in  its  details  and  direction.  She 
is  less  concerned  with  the  actual  phenomena 
of  parental  love  than  with  the  philosophy 
which  defines  and  explains  it.  Her  view  is  to 
this  extent  deeper,  though  less  distinct.  Of 
her  understanding  of  the  possibilities  involved, 
a  single  passage  from  Adam  Bede  gives  con- 
clusive evidence: 

Family  likeness  has  often  a  deep  sadness  in 
it.  Nature,  that  great  tragic  dramatist,  knits 
us  together  by  bone  and  muscle,  and  divides  us 
by  the  subtler  web  of  our  brains ;  blends  yearn- 
ing and  repulsion,  and  ties  us  by  our  heart- 


146     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAEDY 

strings  to  beings  that  jar  us  at  every  move- 
ment. We  hear  a  voice  with  the  very  cadence 
of  our  own  uttering  thoughts  we  despise;  we 
see  eyes — ah,  so  like  our  mother's! — averted 
from  us  in  cold  alienation,  and  our  last  darling 
child  startles  us  with  the  air  and  gestures  of 
the  sister  we  parted  from  in  bitterness  long 
years  ago. 

A  striking  illustration  of  the  truth  of  this 
commentary  is  found  in  the  story  of  Mrs. 
Transome  and  her  son  Harold.  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  this  child,  born  of  an  unhappy 
intrigue,  developed  in  time  such  abilities  and 
physical  traits  as  effectively  proclaimed  his 
paternity.  To  his  mother's  eye  these  were 
unmistakably  plain  from  the  first  days  of  his 
return  from  his  many  years'  sojourn  in  the 
Levant.  Thus,  in  spite  of  her  devoted  love 
for  him,  he  became  a  constant  reminder  to  her 
of  her  infidelity. 

Of  Mrs.  Transome's  feeling  toward  her 
son  we  learn  much.  For  him  she  had  been 
willing  to  make  sacrifices  and  run  risks  which 
galled  her  pride  in  every  way.  She  had  forced 
herself  to  endure  the  presence  of  Matthew 


THE  INCREMENT  OF  YEARS  147 

Jermyn,  for  whom  her  quondam  passion  had 
become  the  bitterest  hatred,  as  his  pettiness 
had  made  itself  apparent;  and  she  had  striven 
with  all  her  might  to  preserve  some  traces  of 
the  family  dignity  for  Harold.  Yet  there  was 
a  strain  of  loneliness  and  isolation  in  her  life, 
about  which  George  Eliot  notes  the  following: 
"It  is  a  fact  perhaps  kept  a  little  too  much  in 
the  background,  that  mothers  have  a  self  larg- 
er than  their  maternity,  and  that  when  their 
sons  have  become  taller  than  themselves,  and 
are  gone  from  them  to  college  or  into  the 
world,  there  are  wide  spaces  of  their  time 
which  are  not  filled  with  praying  for  their 
boys,  reading  old  letters,  and  envying  yet 
blessing  those  who  are  attending  to  their 
shirt-buttons." 

Mrs.  Transome's  mother  love  is  an  illustra- 
tion of  another  principle  formulated  by 
George  Eliot.  "The  mother's  love  is  at  first 
an  absorbing  delight,  blunting  all  other  sensi- 
bilities; it  is  an  expansion  of  the  animal  exist- 
ence ;  it  enlarges  the  imagined  range  for  self  to 
move  in;  but  in  after  years  it  can  only  con- 


148     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

tinue  to  be  joy  on  the  same  terms  as  other  long- 
lived  love — that  is,  by  much  suppression  of 
self  and  power  of  living  in  the  experience  of 
another." 

The  affection  of  Rufus  Lyon  for  Esther, 
and  of  Silas  Marner  for  Eppie  are  instances 
of  other  phases  of  parental  feeling.  In  both 
of  these  cases  the  story  is  of  the  adoption  of 
a  child  without  claims  of  kinship,  and  its  rear- 
ing to  maturity.  In  both  stories  the  resulting 
affection  is  one  which  rivals  in  intensity  the 
sentiment  of  actual  paternity.  Indeed,  in  a 
sense  it  derives  greater  force  from  its  volun- 
tary character,  linking  itself  as  it  does  with 
fundamental  needs  and  affections. 

The  increment  of  years  may  be  suggested 
from  these  examples.  To  Hardy,  age  brings 
with  it  the  consciousness  of  the  inevitable  su- 
perseding of  the  old  by  the  new.  Sometimes 
the  perception  of  the  changing  order  is  accom- 
panied by  the  realization  that  "God  fulfils 
Himself  in  many  ways."  More  often  it  brings 
with  it  the  cynical  acquiescence  in  the  changes 
which  assigns  only  the  lowest  motives  to  hu- 


THE  INCREMENT  OF   YEARS  149 

man  action,  which  views  with  a  leering  toler- 
ance painful  attempts  at  reconstruction  or  vis- 
its invective  and  vituperation  upon  innovators. 
Such  a  bitterness  toward  life  George  Eliot 
shows  only  in  Mrs.  Transome — a  bitterness 
which  is  explained  and  accounted  for  by  past 
misdeeds.  From  Mrs.  Bulstrode,  the  wife  of 
the  dishonest  Middlemarch  banker,  whose  sin- 
cere affection  for  an  unworthy  man  makes  her 
strong  and  loyal  in  spite  of  public  disgrace, 
to  the  sensitive,  appealing  figure  of  Rufus 
Lyon,  with  his  nervous  anxiety  to  expiate  a 
fancied  sin,  and  his  charitable  hope  for  all  the 
world,  the  rule  is  that  of  increasing  sympathy 
and  tolerance  for  all  the  world. 

Curiously  enough.  Hardy  gives  n«  pictures 
of  the  old  age  which  must  succeed  a  youth 
such  as  that  which  he  so  frequently  describes. 
We  are  given  no  means  of  observing  the  de- 
cadence and  decline  of  characters  like  Damon 
.Wildeve  and  Eustacia  Vye.  If  the  explana- 
tion for  this  lies,  as  it  may,  in  the  belief  that 
nature  cannot  allow  the  perpetuation  of  such 
characters   and   their  reproduction,    Hardy's 


150      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAEDY 

view  of  life  may  be  felt  to  hold  at  least  one 
element  of  saving  hope  about  it.  Social  sci- 
ence, to  be  sure,  expresses  a  contrary  doctrine ; 
but  it  is  a  doctrine  which  the  larger  philo- 
sophic view,  which  is  properly  the  birth-right 
of  the  artist,  might  reasonably  transcend.  By 
a  strange  chance,  it  is  the  old  age  of  Mrs. 
Transome,  in  Felice  Holt,  which  shows  more 
clearly  the  maturity  of  a  completely  Hardy- 
esque  character. 

No  discussion  of  such  figures  as  these  is 
complete  without  the  mention  of  certain  home- 
spun lives  which  are  always  thrust  into  the 
background  of  the  tales,  yet  whose  individuali- 
ties are  marked  enough  to  gain  decisive  recog- 
nition. Such  an  one  is  Denner,  the  faithful 
lady's  maid  to  Mrs.  Transome,  whose  tact  is 
such  as  to  conceal  her  intimate  knowledge  of 
family  secrets,  yet  whose  understanding  cre- 
ates the  only  outlets  for  the  surcharged  emo- 
tion of  her  mistress — a  woman  whose  long 
service  has  entitled  her  to  presume  upon  her 
station,  yet  whose  breeding  never  relaxes  to 
allow  her  to  do  so.    Sir  Christopher  Cheverel's 


THE   INCREMENT   OF   YEARS  151 

old  gardener,  to  whom  in  her  distress  of  mind 
Cater ina  fled  for  refuge,  is  a  similar  portrait 
— lacking  perhaps  in  the  intimate  knowledge 
which  would  make  him  completely  sympa- 
thetic, yet  seeking  by  every  means  in  his  power 
to  soothe  where  he  could  not  comprehend. 
More  shadowy  are  the  corresponding  persons 
in  Hardy's  novels,  as  a  rule,  yet  one  recol- 
lects such  a  figure  as  the  widow  Edlin,  of 
Jude  the  Obscure,  crude,  coarse  and  jarring 
as  she  is,  as  none  the  less  a  study  of  a  gen- 
uine, and  sincere,  if  unpleasant,  type.  So  also 
is  the  case  of  Drusilla  Fawley,  with  her  crotch- 
ets and  eccentricities,  and  her  superstitious 
insistence  that  the  Fawleys  were  never  made 
for  marriage.  Old  Dewy,  his  son  Reuben,  and 
the  other  members  of  the  Mellstock  choir,  are 
delightful  miniatures,  perfect  in  their  propor- 
tion and  coloring.  The  Christmas  waits  of 
Egdon  cannot  be  forgotten,  so  life-like  are 
they  in  their  fashion ;  the  only  comparison 
which  one  can  make  with  them  is  with  the  stur- 
dy, glorious  group  of  Athenian  mechanicals, 


1 


152      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

Snug  the  Joiner,  Bottom  the  .Weaver,  Starve- 
ling the  Tailor,  and  their  companions. 

It  is  a  happiness  that  old  age  presents  it- 
self in  these  colors  and  under  this  guise.  And 
that  Hardy  and  George  Eliot  should  be  at 
one  in  these  details  explains  at  least  one  curi- 
ous fact,  that  one  of  Hardy's  earliest  novels, 
published  anonymously,  should  have  been  at- 
tributed to  her.  The  euphemistic  instinct 
which  seeks  to  present  the  fairest  aspect  of 
the  latter  stages  of  life  is  a  sound  and  healthy 
one,  and  one  which  modern  literature  has  too 
often  failed  to  respect.  However  warped  and 
destructive  may  be  his  view  of  the  waxing 
generation,  Hardy  loyally  preserves  the  more 
gracious  phases  of  the  old.  To  that  extent 
he  is  ^'Victorian,"  as  was  George  Eliot.  To 
that  extent  also  he  is  truly  realist,  and  inter- 
preter of  human  character  and  dignity. 


RADICAL  AND  REACTIONARY 

\ 

IN  the  preceding  essays  we  have  examined 
the  salient  points  of  contrast  between  two 
representatives,  one  of  a  discarded  social  the- 
ory, the  other  of  the  tendencies  which  have 
become  the  main  streams  of  social  develop- 
ment within  the  past  twenty-five  years.  Such 
a  contrast  would  be  merely  curious  and  in- 
teresting, were  it  not  for  the  conclusions  which 
it  forces  upon  us.  The  questions  which  it 
raises  are  not  alone  those  issues  of  personal 
and  individual  life  which  make  the  frame- 
work of  literary  speculation,  but  the  larger 
problems  of  social  aims  and  social  advances. 
We  are  faced  with  two  views  of  life,  vitally 
opposed  to  one  another,  not  only  in  their  the- 
ory but  in  their  observation  regarding  human- 
kind.    One  of  these  has  received  the  acclaim 

153 


154     GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAEDY 

of  the  new  generation ;  has  been  held  to  be  the 
expression,  exaggerated  no  doubt,  yet  in  the 
main  fair,  of  the  type  of  individualism  which 
should  be  allowed  to  govern  the  earth.  The 
other  has  been  discarded  with  other  useless 
and  cumbersome  relics  of  a  somewhat  discred- 
itable intellectual  past.  Our  modern  cant  dis- 
claims all  mention  of  worth  in  a  reactionary 
view  of  life;  admits,  with  a  smile  and  a  shrug 
of  self-complacency,  that  undoubtedly  the  re- 
actionaries of  to-day  were  the  reformers  of  the 
day  before,  but  adds  that  its  own  advances 
have  left  even  the  laggards  beyond  reach  of 
the  older  message. 

To  those  who  think  soberly  and  long,  the 
question  is  not  so  readily  answered.  And  the 
suggested  lines  of  thought  lead  still  farther 
afield,  beyond  the  domain  of  literature  and 
sociology,  and  into  the  abstract  region  of 
philosophical  discussion.  Eventually,  the  prob- 
lem is  formulated:  What  is  the  essence  of  the 
radical  position,  and  how  does  it  differ  from 
the  reactionary  ideal? 

In  its  broad  aspects  the  distinction  is  essen- 


RADICAL   AND   REACTIONARY  155 

tially  a  simple  one.  The  reactionary  position  is 
always  the  easiest  of  the  two  possible  courses, 
while  the  radical  attitude  is  instantly  be- 
set with  difficulties.  This,  however,  does  nof 
tell  the  whole  story,  for  it  must  further  be  re- 
membered that  as  radicalism  and  reaction  are 
states  of  mind,  not  specific  opinions,  a  view 
upon  a  given  matter  is  not  of  necessity  ger- 
mane. The  veriest  reactionary  may  none  the 
less  be  far  ahead  of  his  generation,  and  the 
radical  may  appear  to  be  one  of  its  stragglers. 
For  the  reactionary,  accepting  as  he  does  the 
easiest  view  of  life  that  presents  itself,  may 
also  hold  the  most  advanced  opinions  of  the 
day,  by  virtue  of  his  very  backwardness.  We 
are  familiar  with  persons  who  hold  highly  lib- 
eralized religious  beliefs,  by  inheritance,  as  it 
were,  not  by  reason  of  the  intellectual  pio- 
neering which  alone  entitles  a  man  to  the  repu- 
tation for  radical  thought.  The  analogy  holds 
in  other  departments  of  opinion  equally.  It 
will  be  observed,  therefore,  that  there  is  no  in- 
compatibility between  the  spirit  of  reaction 
and  advanced  opinion.     On  the  other  hand. 


156      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

a  man  of  truly  radical  temper  may  consis- 
tently hold  very  conservative  beliefs.  By  defi- 
nition the  radical  attitude  is  the  difficult  one — 
difficult  because  it  involves  not  only  indepen- 
\  dent  study  and  conclusion,  but  the  mainten- 
ance of  this  independence  against  any  pres- 
sure. It  is  not  radicalism  to  cry  revolt  and 
go  your  way,  but  it  is  radicalism  to  maintain 
the  revolutionary  fire  against  opposition  and 
in  the  face  of  privation.  Often  the  sincerest 
radical  may  hold  the  most  conservative  views. 
The  radicalism  which  lacks  the  courage  of  its 
convictions,  which  balks  at  the  logical  actions 
resulting  from  its  belief,  does  not  properly  de- 
serve the  title.  Much  of  this,  however,  is 
current  among  us  by  way  of  advanced  thought, 
and  arrogates  to  itself  the  privileges  which  be- 
long of  right  to  that  which  appears  more  con- 
servative. 

The  working  conditions  of  life  offer  but  a 
slight  field  for  the  practice  of  this  false  radi- 
calism, rather  fortunately,  on  the  whole,  for 
it  seldom  happens  that  a  man  is  given  both 
the  means  to  put  his  theories  into  operation 


KADICAL   AND   REACTIONARY  157 

and  the  theories  for  unlimited  exploitation. 
He  is  obliged  to  take  thought  for  the  morrow, 
to  consider  what  he  shall  eat  and  wherewith 
he  shall  be  clothed,  and  it  amounts  almost  to 
an  instinct  with  him  so  to  correlate  his  opin- 
ions and  his  circumstances  that  there  shall  be 
no  fundamental  clash.  This  is  a  simple  mat- 
ter of  expediency — it  has  nothing  to  do  with 
his  ideals  of  morality  or  justice,  or  his  views 
of  personal  liberty.  The  reactionary  allows 
this  discrepancy  to  continue  between  his  be- 
lief and  his  behavior  without  making  an  effort 
to  change  either,  for  this  is  the  easiest  solution 
of  the  whole  matter.  He  will  agree  with  you 
that  the  conditions  of  child-labor  are  shocking; 
but  he  will  argue  that  such  labor  is  necessary 
and  cannot  be  abolished.  He  will  cry  "Peace, 
peace,"  and  unhesitatingly  devote  himself  to 
the  profits  that  accrue  from  war.  The  radical, 
on  the  other  hand,  will  at  least  be  consistent 
so  far  as  is  humanly  possible.  He  may  be- 
come a  fanatic,  or  impractical,  but  his  intel- 
lectual position  will  be  a  clear-cut  and  decided 
one,  whatever  it  may  be.    He  will  never  con- 


158      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

tent  himself  with  the  world  as  it  is,  though 
the  universe  of  his  conception  be  but  the  most 
insane  dreaming  of  a  frenzied  imagination. 
Such  men  make  martyrs;  but  they  also  make 
leaders  and  pioneers.  They  are  willing  to 
stake  everything  they  value  upon  the  sound- 
ness of  their  conclusions — and  though  many, 
— even,  perhaps,  most, — fail,  of  those  who 
succeed  are  the  men  who  make  history. 

Some  such  antithesis  as  this  is  perhaps  a 
partial  explanation  of  the  Christian  paradox, 
"I  come  to  bring  not  peace,  but  a  sword." 
For  peace,  as  it  has  been  crystallized  in  the 
comprehension  of  Christian  dogmatists,  is 
really  a  form  of  reaction — a  stagnation  of 
intellectual  and  spiritual  faculties,  an  accept- 
ance of  a  status  quo  as  both  possible  and  ulti- 
mately desirable.  The  remoteness  of  the  reali- 
zation of  this  dream  does  not  affect  the  reac- 
tionary character  of  the  intellectual  position 
which  makes  it  possible.  Philosophically,  it 
is  true,  it  is  possible  to  conceive  an  active  and 
expanding  peace  which  shall  develop  and  in- 
sist upon  the  exercise  of  the  radical  and  ardu- 


RADICAL  AND  REACTIONARY  159 

ous  beliefs  and  convictions;  but  the  figure  of 
the  sword  is  as  yet  the  only  one  which  carries 
with  it  the  full  virility  and  dynamic  emphasis 
essential  to  right  understanding. 

Certain  limitations  have  always  been  im- 
posed upon  the  radical  "by  the  actual  condi- 
tions of  the  world  in  which  he  lived.  Some- 
times these  are  the  limitations  of  temporary 
circumstances,  removable  by  hard  work  and 
concerted  action,  though  after  a  season  of  bit- 
ter travail  and  anguish.  During  such  periods 
there  are  always  the  few,  radicals  in  very 
truth,  who  must  in  some  sense  make  atone- 
ment for  the  blindness  of  the  multitude.  And 
not  infrequently  the  obstacles  are  of  a  more 
fundamental  nature,  remediable  only  in  the 
latter  stages  of  the  world's  progress.  Those 
who  see  and  guess  these  remoter  issues  are 
the  mystics  and  poets,  those  who  dream 
dreams  and  see  visions,  and  who  pay  the  heav- 
iest penalties  for  their  insight.  They  can 
never  hope  for  the  glimpse  into  their  Prom- 
ised Land,  or  see  the  end  of  the  wilderness, 
and  they  must  always  bear  the  tormenting 


/ 


160      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAEDY 

fear  lest  they  be  but  followers  of  wandering 
fires. 

An  author  who  seeks  to  expound  a  philos- 
ophy of  life  may  choose  in  some  measure  the 
kind  of  world  in  which  to  give  it  expression. 
His  philosophy  can  only  be  called  radical  in 
so  far  as  it  forces  upon  individuals  the  labori- 
ous courses  of  life,  or  reactionary  in  that  it 
accepts  the  easiest  view  of  human  actions  and 
human  character.  It  is  not  necessary  for  lit- 
1  erature  to  do  either  of  these  things.  It  may 
\  aim  merely  at  the  realistic  portrayal  of  life 
J  without  comment  or  judgment.  But  when 
it  does  this  it  loses  its  distinctive  quality.  For 
literature  is  the  only  medium  for  the  record 
of  reflection.  Painting  and  sculpture  are  pri- 
marily concerned  with  the  bodily  form  of 
things,  music  with  their  atmosphere,  if  one 
may  use  such  a  phrase, — in  literature  only  is 
there  scope  for  the  exercise  of  the  rational 
powers  alike  of  artist  and  audience.  In  the 
drama  alone  is  this  distinctive  quality  sus- 
pended; for  in  proportion  as  drama  gains  in 
representative  force,  it  loses  its  literary  qual- 


RADICAL   AND  REACTIONARY  161 

ity.  We  recognize  a  sharp  distinction  between 
"closet"  and  "acting"  drama;  and  in  our 
classical  dramatic  literature  the  practical  test 
of  excision,  where  circumstances  require,  shows 
all  too  clearly  the  essential  alignment  between 
the  drama  and  the  representative  arts.  For 
the  "literary"  passages,  those  of  fine  reflec- 
tion, or  discriminating  commentary,  or  sheer 
poetic  fantasy,  are  those  which  must  give  way 
to  the  necessities  of  stage-manager  and  pro- 
ducing-agent. 

In  this  large  sense  the  radical  point  of  view 
of  the  two  we  have  been  contrasting  is  not 
that  of  Thomas  Hardy,  "advanced"  though 
his  theories  may  be,  but  that  of  George  Eliot. 
For  Hardy's  view  of  life,  in  spite  of  the  pre- 
vailingly tragic  outcome  wliich  results  in  spe- 
cific cases,  is  an  easy  and  simple  one.  Such 
and  such  are  the  human  passions,  irresistible 
and  immutable ;  though  a  man  may  see  in  this 
indulgence  the  destruction  of  his  hopes  and 
ideals,  he  has  no  choice  but  to  obey.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  he  rarely  looks  far  enough  to  be 
aware,  of  the  more  distant,  consequences;  nor 


162      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

does  he  care  to  do  so.  This  fatalistic  view  is 
always  the  reactionary  one,  even  though  it 
may  lead  to  brilliant  achievements.  Hardy's 
"radicalism"  has  no  more  justification  than 
that  which  comes  from  a  brutally  outspoken 
and  unreserved  handling  of  themes  of  crude 
passion  and  cruder  mentality.  He  is  content 
to  accept  conditions  as  they  are,  protesting  a 
little  regretfully  that  they  are  so,  but  without 
so  much  as  a  theory  of  possible  change.  It  is 
the  philosophy  of  the  Lotos-Eaters: 

Let  us  alone — what  is  it  that  will  last? 
All  things  are  taken  from  us,  and  become 
Portions  and  parcels  of  the  dreadful  past. 
Let  us  alone.    What  pleasure  can  we  have 
To  war  with  evil?    Is  there  any  peace 
In  ever  climbing  up  the  climbing  wave? 
All  things  have  rest,  and  ripen  toward  the 

grave 
In  silence — ripen,  fall  and  cease; 
Give  us  long  rest  or  death,  dark  death,  or 

dreamful  ease. 

The  moral  stamina  which  comes  from  a  defi- 
nite, if  difficult  and  unattainable,   goal  to- 


RADICAL  AND   REACTIONARY  163 

ward  which  endeavor  may  be  directed,  is  ut- 
terly absent  from  this  view  of  life.  This  fol- 
lowing of  the  instinctive  emotional  currents 
makes  no  appeal  to  the  fundamentals  of  char- 
acter. 

/For  radicalism,  to  be  real  and  permanent, 
must  rest  in  the  character  behind  the  action. 
This  is  true  of  George  Eliot.  She  supports 
the  traditions  because,  although  in  certain  re- 
spects (against  which  she  protests  unhesita- 
tingly) they  are  inadequate,  yet  they  repre- 
sent a  sound  standard  of  life  and  of  morality. 
Her  agreement  is  of  the  radical  sort  which 
leads  to  progression,  not  the  reactionary  ac- 
ceptance of  the  gospel  of  things  as  they  are. 
This  intellectual  position  explains  the  appar- 
ent contradiction  between  her  own  theory  and 
practice.  Many  people  go  no  further  than 
this,  and  condemn  her  for  insincerity  on  no 
other  or  better  grounds.  They  cannot  realize 
that  her  revolt  from  convention  was  inspired 
by  thorough  respect  for  convention  rather 
than  contempt.  In  this  the  radical  is  distin- 
guished from  the  reactionary,  who,  because  he 


164      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HAEDY 

is  swept  along  on  the  surface  currents  of  his 
time  and  his  social  group,  conforms  to  its  regu- 
lations as  a  part  of  his  passive  subjection  to 
life  rather  than  support  them  in  vital  agree- 
ment. 

It  is  true  that  radicalism  is  not  always  of 
this  nature.  Sometimes  it  is  to  be  found  in  a 
sincere  intellectual  revolt  against  any  and  all 
the  restraints  of  socialized  existence — a  re- 
volt which  lacks  nothing  of  the  dynamism  of 
that  which  we  have  been  considering,  but 
which  is  irreconcilably  at  variance  with  organ- 
ized society.  Such  revolutionary  activity  ac- 
complishes nothing  except  as  it  changes  the 
spiritual  temper  of  its  contemporaries  in  the 
direction  of  a  sincere  repudiation  of  that  which 
it  has  ceased  to  believe.  Even  with  this  un- 
certain achievement,  it  is  not  to  be  feared  or 
to  be  despised,  so  long  as  its  sincerity  is  past 
question. 

Judged  by  these  standards  the  essential 
radicalism  of  George  Eliot's  position,  even 
now,  after  a  generation  of  upheaval  and  un- 
rest, is  apparent.  We  have  seen  how  her  view 


r  RADICAL  AND   REACTIONARY  165 

of  emerging  womanhood  compares  favorably 
with  the  movements  of  the  present  day)  To 
have  anticipated  the  line  of  development  in 
this  particular  is  perhaps  the  most  remarkable 
test  of  radicalism.  We  have  always  contrast- 
ed Western  respect  for  womanhood  with 
Eastern  disregard,  as  we  have  contrasted  An- 
glo-Saxon deference  with  Latin  indifference. 
But  in  spite  of  this  mark  of  supremacy  as  we 
describe  it,  we  have  tolerated  conditions  which 
have  brought  upon  us  the  beginning  of  a 
great  struggle  whereof  the  end  is  not  yet.  It 
is  inevitable  that,  in  the  development  conse- 
quent upon  such  a  struggle,  many  things  for- 
merly considered  essential  will  lose  their  value 
in  our  eyes.  One  possibility  of  change  along 
unexpected  lines  is  suggested  by  Bertrand 
Russell  in  the  chapter  of  Why  Men  Fight 
which  deals  with  the  population  question: 

The  diminution  of  numbers,  in  all  likelihood, 
will  rectify  itself  in  time  through  the  elimina- 
tion of  those  characteristics  which  at  present 
lead  to  a  small  birthrate.  Men  and  women  who 
can  still  believe  the  Catholic  faith  will  have  a 


166      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

biological  advantage;  gradually  a  race  will 
grow  up  which  will  be  impervious  to  the  as- 
saults of  reason,  and  will  believe  imperturba- 
bly  that  limitation  of  families  leads  to  hell-fire. 
Women  who  have  mental  interests,  who  care 
about  art  or  literature  or  politics,  who  desire 
a  career  or  who  value  their  liberty,  will  gradu- 
ally grow  rarer,  and  be  more  and  more  re- 
placed by  a  placid  maternal  type  which  has  no 
interests  outside  the  home  and  no  dislike  of 
the  burden  of  motherhood.  This  result,  which 
ages  of  masculine  domination  have  vainly 
striven  to  achieve,  is  likely  to  be  the  final  out- 
come of  women's  emancipation  and  of  their  at- 
tempt to  enter  upon  a  wider  sphere  than  that  to 
which  the  jealousy  of  men  confined  them  in  the 
past. 

To  steer  a  careful  way  between  this  danger, 
undoubtedly  a  real  one,  and  those  clearly- 
visualized  evils  which  many  years  have  shown, 
is  an  herculean  task.  The  view  of  womanliood 
in  its  larger  relations  is  one  in  which  George 
Eliot  has  faced  and  analyzed  both  possibili- 
ties, and  reached  a  practical  mean.  It  is  not 
unlikely  that  the  conditions  prevailing  at  the 
close  of  the  war  will  make  hers  a  more  radical 


KADICAL   AND   REACTIONARY  167 

view  than  now;  for  with  the  emphasis  upon 
repopulating  the  world  which  has  already  be- 
gun will  come  a  consequent  relaxation  of  mor- 
al standards,  whose  danger  to  men,  great  as 
that  is,  will  be  infinitely  less  than  the  danger 
to  women  caused  by  the  growth  of  an  attitude 
of  moral  and  physical  compliance  by  which 
alone  can  sterility  be  avoided.  Only  by  some 
such  intellectual  realization  as  hers  of  the 
value  of  tradition  and  the  possible  reconcilia- 
tion between  tradition  and  the  newer  freedom 
can  the  double  menace  be  escaped.  .We  shall 
ultimately  learn  that  the  unregulated  liberty  | 
which  is  the  basis  of  Hardy's  view  of  life  is  f 
profound  evidence  of  the  easy-going  laissez-  ^ 
faire  spirit  of  reaction. 

One  may  ask,  then, — ^What  is  the  principle 
of  authority  which  the  radical  recognizes? 
Clearly,  it  will  not  do  to  insist  on  tradition 
alone,  however  much  we  may  rightly  value 
the  experience  which  tradition  summarizes. 
Neither  will  it  serve  to  say,  as  some  have  done, 
that  a  revival  of  the  religious  spirit  will  meet 
the  need.     A  new  religious  awakening  will 


168      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

never  have  the  absolute  authority  which  it 
might  have  had  before  the  upbuilding  of  the 
modern  critical  spirit.  It  will  undoubtedly 
gain,  for  it  will  have  the  loyal  support  of  in- 
tellect and  imagination  alike;  but  its  appeal 
will  not  be  that  of  authority.  The  authorita- 
tive control  must  come  from  yet  another 
source — the  constant  longing  and  active  labor- 
ing for  complete  sincerity,  intellectual  and 
moral.  A  man  whose  intellectual  integrity  is 
unquestioned  may  be  trusted  with  the  upbuild- 
ing of  a  sound  radicalism. 

The  elements  which  go  to  develop  this  sin- 
cerity of  character  and  outlook  are  essentially 
those  which  produce  a  sound  literary  realism, 
the  truth  to  nature  which  critics  and  artists 
have  struggled  after  for  centuries.  George 
Eliot  represents  this  realistic  tradition.  It  is 
easy  to  pass  from  this  attitude  toward  life,  es- 
sentially a  rational  and  sincere  one,  to  that 
which  goes  by  the  name  of  naturalism,  by  a 
simple  exaggeration  of  details  and  a  falsifica- 
tion of  facts.  This  is  typical  of  the  school 
which  Hardy  represents.     There  is  the  same 


RADICAL   AND   REACTIONARY  169 

parallel  between  realism  and  naturalism  that  i 
there  is  between  authority  and  autocracy,  be-  j 
tween  self-defence   and  aggression,   between  * 
discipline  and  subjection.    The  danger  is  that 
the  lawful  boundaries  of  each  of  these  excel- 
lences may  be  overstepped,  with  the  usual 
consequence  of  extreme  action.     It  is  by  as- 
sociation with  such  extremes  that  people  have 
been  led  to  discredit  what  passes  for  radical- 
ism, never  perceiving  the  differentiation  be- 
tween the  two.    The  modern  emphasis  is  dis- 
tinctly one  of  extremes,  in  this  as  in  larger 
matters. 

The  same  eccentric  tendency  is  to  be  noted 
in  the  alternations  of  public  feeling  between 
moods  of  quasi-religious  ecstasy  and  unex- 
ampled vindictiveness.  Since  the  outbreak  of 
the  European  War  we  have  hailed  the  devel- 
opment of  a  new  religious  impulse — one  which 
many  observers  feel  to  be  a  great  gift  of  the 
conflict.  Parallel  with  it  is  the  strenuous  en- 
deavor to  stimulate  and  perpetuate  national 
and  individual  hatreds  as  a  divine  necessity. 
No  intermediate  position  receives  just  consid- 


170      GEORGE  ELIOT  AND  THOMAS  HARDY 

eration.  The  radical  attitude  is  that  of  a  small 
group  of  pacifists  in  all  countries  whose  posi- 
tion is  summarized  by  Bertrand  Russell:  "The 
active  pacifists,  however,  are  not  of  this  class: 
they  are  not  men  without  impulsive  force,  but 
men  in  whom  some  impulse  to  which  war  is 
hostile  is  strong  enough  to  overcome  the  im- 
pulses that  lead  to  war.  It  is  not  the  act  of  a 
passionless  man  to  throw  himself  athwart  the 
whole  movement  of  the  national  life,  to  urge 
an  outwardly  hopeless  cause,  to  incur  oblo- 
quy and  to  resist  the  contagion  of  collective 
opinion.  The  impulse  to  avoid  the  hostility  of 
public  opinion  is  one  of  the  strongest  in  hu- 
man nature,  and  can  only  be  overcome  by  an 
unusual  force  of  direct  and  uncalculating  im- 
pulse; it  is  not  cold  reason  alone  that  can 
prompt  such  an  act." 

To  us  of  the  present,  George  Eliot  is  one 
of  these  advocates  of  what  appears  a  lost 
cause.  After  a  brief  season  of  high  esteem, 
she  has  lost  prestige  as  a  thinker,  while  retain- 
ing the  doubtful  glory  of  artistic  achievement 
in  an  unfashionable  style.    She  is  not  one  of 


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